Window 


The  Open  Window. 


f°i          W  J 
Uoens*     Window 


y   S.    Oemple/     ofiuzdtor& 


<9 lludtzated  by 


(jsppleton   and,    (oompany 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


^Dedications 


To 


ERIC  LEWIS 


\Y  DEAR  ERIC, 

When  it  is  wet  in 
Town;  when  you  see 
nothing  but  umbrellas 
from  your  windows  in 
Pall  Mall  East  and  the 
sky  over  Cook's  offices  is 
wearing  that  drab  ma- 
terial of  grey  which  is 
only  sold  in  cities  in  the 
piece — in  a  word,  when 
you  can't  just  shove  on 
your  hat  and  start  out 
for  one  of  your  walks 
into  the  country,  then,  if 
it  pleases  you,  take  out 
this  book,  pull  down  the 
blinds,  light  the  lamp  and 
•Jet  me  take  you  there  in- 
stead. 

Yours, 

E.  TEMPLE  THURSTON. 
Gellibrands. 


ooorT2 

,£,CA-  I  w* 


ae  G/lludtzationd 


The  Open  Window   ......      Frontispiece. 

The  Blackcap       ............  5 

Georgina     ......     ........  25 

"  'Well  —  I  —  I  had  some  porridge  —  bacon  and  at 
least  two  eggs.     So  you  see  how  impossible 

it  is'"  .............  33 

"  '  She  asked  Weyburn,  their  gardener,  about  it'"  .  51 

The  Lark    ..............  Si 

Diana     ...............  105 

The  Dead  Bullfinch      ..........  149 

The  Vicar  ..............  215 

Diana  and  Allan       ...........  271 

"For  the  last  time"       .........  319 


APRIL  14 


OUBTLESS  in  absence  the  heart 
does  grow  fonder,  but  temper- 
ing the  sting  of  that  absence 
must  be  some  certain  knowl- 
edge of  return.  If  the  pair  of 
blackcaps  which,  for  the  last  four 
years,  have  built  their  nest  in  the  quickset 
hedge  that  runs  about  my  garden  were  never 
to  come  back,  I  should  miss  them  indeed; 
but  in  time  I  sadly  suspect  that  the  prolonga- 
tion of  their  absence  would  diminish  my  regret. 
Human  nature  is  thus  adaptable.  The  sorrows  of 
this  life  are  lessons.  I  hold  no  sympathy  with 
those  who  regard  them  as  a  chastisement.  None 
of  which  is  to  the  point,  for  the  blackcaps,  as  is  the 
nature  of  these  little  creatures,  have  returned  to 
their  old  nesting  place  for  yet  another  summer. 

Just  as  we  were  at  tea  the  other  evening — the 
window  was  wide  open,  for  the  sooner  Spring 
comes,  the  more  ready  are  we  to  let  her  in — I  heard 
a  familiar  sound.  It  brought  the  years  back  to  me, 
one  after  another  in  quick  succession,  the  last  four 
years  during  which  Georgina  and  I  have  come  to 

3 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

find  our  home  in  this  old  vicarage  of  Bramlingham. 

"The  blackcaps  have  come  back,"  said  I,  and  she 
looked  over  the  tea  cosey  at  me  and  smiled. 

It  sounds  very  little,  a  slight  incident  indeed  of 
which  to  make  record,  but  I  repeat,  it  brought  back 
those  four  years.  After  St.  Margaret's  in  the  East 
End,  this  little  living  of  Bramlingham  with  its 
church  of  the  thirteenth  century,  its  vicarage,  in  the 
pantry  of  which  the  date  1615  stands  carved  upon 
one  of  the  oak  beams — well,  I  am  no  hand  with  the 
pen.  I  cannot  describe  the  joy  or  the  difference 
it  is  to  me. 

Parting,  of  course,  is  no  easy  matter.  There 
were  many  friends  I  left  behind  in  that  grey,  deso- 
late corner  of  the  world.  But  there  is  always  the 
post.  I  hear  from  them  constantly.  They  write 
to  me  for  advice  and  I  reply  with  such  counsel  as 
I  can  offer  them.  Mrs.  Sumpter  has  another  baby 
— her  eighth.  Is  she  to  take  any  notice  because 
her  husband  is  annoyed?  I  write  to  her  that  the 
world  being  as  it  is  and  God  being  more  generous 
to  those  women  who  deserve  it  than  to  those  who 
do  not,  it  were  as  well  to  call  the  child  after  him 
and  assure  him  it  will  be  the  pride  of  the  family. 
She  replies,  it  is  a  girl.  Whereupon  I  wait  a  week 

4 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

or  so,  then  write  again  to  enquire  how  things  are 
going  on.  She  replies  that  she  has  called  the  child 
after  his  favourite  sister  and  that  he  has  taken 
quite  a  fancy  to  it.  We  are  very  small  and  God 
meant  us  to  deal  with  little  things. 

I  remember  once  standing  upon  a  mountain  and 
watching  a  man  walk  through  the  pass  below.  If 
ever  I  took  my  eyes  away,  it  was  difficult  again  to 
find  him,  so  minute  was  he  amidst  the  boulders  that 
had  rolled  down  the  mountain  side.  He  looked 
no  more  than  an  ant  crawling  over  the  face  of  the 
earth.  I  always  remember  that.  God  also  sees 
from  above. 

But  the  blackcaps  have  returned.  The  sound  I 
heard  through  the  open  window  was  the  gentle  song 
of  the  male  bird  recording,  as  they  call  it.  This  is  no 
more  than  a  soft  practice  of  that  song  with  which 
he  is  going  to  woo  his  mate.  The  same  song,  which, 
when  once  he  has  won  her,  he  will  sing  to  her  in 
the  long  evenings  while  she  is  set  upon  her  nest. 

As  soon  as  I  had  finished  my  cup  of  tea,  I  went 
out  into  the  garden  and  listened.  I  think  I  would 
as  soon  hear  the  song  of  a  blackcap  as  that  of  a 
nightingale.  And  when  he  is  practising  during 
those  early  days  of  April,  playing  those  tender 
2  7 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

notes,  all  muted  lest  the  secret  of  his  song  should 
be  disclosed,  there  is  no  bird  in  England  can  com- 
pare with  him  in  sweetness  of  voice. 

For  only  a  few  days  does  this  rehearsal  of  his 
melody  take  place.  Then  he  bursts  into  the  free, 
open  song  of  his  wooing,  wherefore  I  beckoned  to 
Georgina  to  come  into  the  garden  and  sit  beside 
me  and  together  we  both  listened  to  the  softened 
music  of  his  promised  serenade.  Whenever  he 
touched  a  phrase  it  seemed  he  liked,  he  would  re- 
peat it  two  or  three  times,  a  little  louder  on  each 
occasion,  as  though  to  gain  the  fullest  confidence 
of  his  voice. 

"  'Tis  nearly  as  good  as  a  nightingale,"  said 
Georgina. 

"  'Tis  better,"  said  I.  "There's  not  a  sad  note 
in  his  compass." 

"  'Our  sweetest  songs/  "  she  quoted,  "  'are  those 
which  tell  of  saddest ' 

There  must  have  been  a  lot  of  the  woman  in 
Shelley,  and  it  was  the  woman  alone  in  him  which 
wrote  such  a  couplet  as  that.  Is  it  women,  par- 
ticularly, who  find  the  joy  in  sadness?  I  know 
nothing  about  them. 

8 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"You  like  the  nightingale  best?"  I  asked. 

"I  do,"  said  she. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  women  often  lie  awake  at 
night.  Men  wake  early.  It  is  then  mostly  that  the 
blackcap  sings — when  the  sun  is  up  in  the  early 
heaven  of  the  morning. 

When  once  his  lyre  is  attuned,  it  is  then  the 
blackcap  sings  indeed.  He  does  not  like  to  be  seen 
when  he  is  practising  his  song.  He  hides  in  the 
leafy  thicknesses  of  the  hedge.  But  so  long  as 
you  do  not  discover  him,  he  will  let  you  come 
quite  close  to  listen.  We  sat  within  two  yards  of 
him  that  afternoon. 

He  gains  more  courage  as  the  Spring  draws  on. 
Indeed  it  is  his  habit  when  taking  the  place  of 
his  mate  upon  the  nest,  to  sing  his  song,  beguiling 
away  the  minutes  as  he  sits  upon  the  eggs.  Hear- 
ing that  song,  just  four  years  ago,  I  peered  into 
the  quickset  hedge  and  found  him  there  alone  upon 
the  nest,  singing  away  to  cheer  the  hour  of  duty. 

Now  had  I  been  a  thoughtless  boy,  what  might 
he  not  have  suffered  for  his  folly?  Men  should 
take  no  hand  in  these  matters.  I  never  meddled 
with  Georgina  when  Diana  was  born. 


APRIL  23 


T  has  been  an  extraordinarily  early 
Spring  with  us  this  year.  By  the 
middle  of  March,  the  quickset  hedge 
around  the  garden  was  covered 
with  bread  and  cheese,  as  we  used 
to  call  it,  where  the  elms  and 
beeches  had  protected  it  from  the 
wind.  Just  at  about  that  time,  on  a 
day  when  the  sun  was  shining  so  brightly  as  to 
make  you  forget  how  recently  the  cloak  of  winter 
had  been  spread  across  the  land,  I  met  the  first 
brimstone  butterfly  down  the  little  lane  that  leads 
to  my  orchard.  How  thankful  one  is  for  such  a 
sight  as  that.  I  am  not  surprised  that  certain  per- 
sons are  so  overcome  with  the  delight  of  it,  that 
they  must  write  in  haste  to  the  papers.  They  are 
proud,  no  doubt,  of  the  especial  honour  vouchsafed 
to  them.  Indeed  it  was  the  first  thing  I  told 
Georgina  myself  that  evening  when  I  came  back 
to  tea. 

"I  saw  a  brimstone  butterfly  in  the  lane,"  said  I, 
directly  I  opened  the  door.  Nothing  short  of  a 
promise  would  have  bound  me  to  keep  it  to  myself 

13 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

and  Nature  exacts  no  such  promise  of  a  man. 
She  gives  you  her  secrets  and  you  may  tell  the 
whole  world  if  it  pleases  you.  And  how  it  does 
please!  But  I  wish  Georgina  could  have  seen  it, 
too. 

Here,  too,  we  are,  not  yet  out  of  April  and  she 
is  complaining  that  some  daffodillies  are  already 
faded.  I  leave  the  garden  to  her.  The  woods  and 
the  fields  are  more  than  enough  for  me.  Indeed 
a  man  might  well  make  study  of  a  single  hedge 
and  he  would  find  enough  therein  to  engage  him 
for  a  whole  lifetime. 

Of  course  Georgina  does  not  work  all  the  garden 
by  herself.  We  have  a  handy  man.  The  last  vicar 
of  Bramlingham  employed  him,  and  when  I  took 
over  the  living,  I  could  not  find  it  in  my  conscience 
to  send  him  away.  It  is  not  that  we  do  not  need 
him,  but  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  like  his  face. 
He  is  civil  and  willing  enough  no  doubt,  and  when 
I  find  these  narrow  prejudices  rising  in  my  mind, 
I  must  struggle  with  myself  to  keep  them  down. 
No  man  should  judge  another  by  his  countenance. 
He  may  inherit  features  which  have  no  relation  to 
the  mind  which  God  has  given  him.  I  am  sure, 
at  heart,  that  Hodgins  is  an  excellent  man. 

14 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

But  strangely  enough,  I  rather  feel  that  Georgina 
is  of  the  same  opinion  as  am  I.  What  is  more,  it 
is  for  the  same  reason,  too.  She  does  not  like 
his  face,  but  has  never  informed  me  that  she  does 
not  like  the  man.  Perhaps  it  is  merely  my  prejudice 
which  tells  me  that  is  why.  I  only  remember  a 
little  conversation  that  once  passed  between  us  soon 
after  we  had  come  to  Bramlingham. 

"What  is  it,"  she  asked  me,  "that  makes  Hodgins 
such  an  ugly  man?" 

"Is  he  ugly?"  said  I.  "I  should  have  thought  he 
had  good  features." 

"I  know,"  she  replied  quickly,  "his  features  are 
all  right,  almost  superior  for  that  class  of  man — 
but  whenever  he  looks  at  me,  I  can't  help  thinking 
how  ugly  he  is." 

"You  don't  dislike  him  on  that  account,  do  you, 
Georgina?"  I  enquired. 

"Oh,  no,"  she  replied  earnestly,  "but  do  you 
remember  Acres,  the  gardener  we  had  at  home, 
before  we  married?  You  used  to  see  him  surely 
whenever  you  came  over?" 

"Do  you  mean  that  ugly  looking  chap,"  said  I, 
"the  man  with  a  red  moustache  and  a  nose  that 
wasn't  quite  straight?" 

15 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Ah — but  he  was  such  a  splendid  fellow,"  said 
she. 

It  is  probably  my  prejudice  again.  Perhaps  she 
meant  nothing  by  that  comparison  at  all. 

V 


The  Lark 

The  larks  in  our  meadows  have  already  paired. 
The  flocks  have  broken  up  and  I  know  we  are  on 
the  verge  of  summer.  Early  this  morning,  the  day 
broke  grey  and  still,  I  saw  one  trying  to  rise  above 
the  mist  which  hung  about  the  country.  But  the 

16 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

atmosphere  was  too  heavy  even  for  the  lightness 
of  his  heart.  He  rose  some  thirty  feet  above  the 
ground,  striving  with  beating  wings  and  a  trembling 
song  to  lift  himself  above  the  mist  into  the  sun- 
shine above.  But  it  was  no  good.  After  a  brave 
struggle  he  sank  back  again  into  the  grass  of  the 
meadow  and  I  saw  him  no  more.  It  reminded  me 
of  the  days  when  depression  sets  in  upon  me.  It 
reminded  me  of  the  days  when  I  have  given  way 
without  even  one  effort  to  rise  above  the  mist.  In- 
deed there  are  books  in  the  running  brooks;  there 
are  sermons  in  stone  and  all  the  lessons  I  have  ever 
learnt,  I  found  in  the  hedgerows  and  the  fields. 

Last  year  I  watched  a  merlin  hovering  above  the 
meadows  beyond  our  orchard.  Georgina  was  with 
me. 

"She's  up  to  no  good,"  said  I,  and  as  she  swooped 
downwards  a  lark  rose  swiftly  out  of  a  clump  of 
reddening  sorrel.  Swiftly  he  ascended  with  the 
hawk  in  hot  pursuit.  Georgina  took  my  hand  and 
held  it  closely. 

"Why  is  it?"  she  whispered,  and  I  think  I  know 
all  the  questions  in  her  mind.  "What  has  the  poor 
little  lark  done?" 

But  I  did  not  answer  just  then  and  we  watched 
17 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

the  chase  together.  With  all  the  strength  of  its 
wings,  the  powerful  creature  strove  to  soar  above 
the  lark.  At  a  great  height  so  that  our  heads 
were  thrown  back  to  watch  it,  it  succeeded  so  far. 
Beneath  it  the  lark  was  fluttering  with  trembling 
wings.  I  think  we  both  then  held  our  breath.  It 
swooped  downwards  again,  but  with  a  swift  flight 
the  lark  swerved  out  of  reach,  then  closing  its 
wings,  it  dropped  like  a  falling  stone  and  in  a  mo- 
ment was  hidden  in  the  tall  grass  of  the  meadow 
once  more. 

I  looked  at  Georgina. 

"That's  what  it  has  done,"  said  I.  "It's  learnt 
to  nerve  itself  to  great  effort.  That  lark  now 
perhaps  will  rise  above  the  mist  and  find  the  sun- 
shine where  another  one  might  fail." 

"I  don't  think  they  ought  to  be  tried  so  much," 
said  she.  "Do  you  mean  to  say  they  wouldn't 
learn  without?" 

"Do  you  regret  St.  Margaret's  in  the  East  End  ?" 
I  asked  her. 

She  looked  up  at  me  and  smiled. 

Then  all  round  about  her  she  looked — at  the 
stream  that  wanders  by  at  the  foot  of  the  meadows 
where  the  sedge-warblers  and  the  reed-buntings 

18 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

build  each  year.     She  looked  at  the  vicarage  chim- 
neys, their  smoke  a  milky  blue  among  the  trees. 
She  looked  at  the  carpet  of  cuckoo  flowers  that 
spreads  down  to  the  stream's  edge. 
All  this  is  our  sun  above  the  mist. 


APRIL  30 


FOUND  a  dead  robin  in  the 
thicket  of  laurel  shrubs  near  the 
gate  this  morning  and  all  day 
have  vainly  endeavoured  to 
imagine  the  cause  of  its  death. 
There  were  no  signs  of  violence 
upon  its  body.  Its  feathers 
practically  were  unruffled.  Had 
it  been  the  cat,  surely  she  would  have  eaten  it. 
Can  it  have  been  old  age  ?  Can  birds  ever  grow  old  ? 
I  have  said  no  word  of  it  to  Georgina. 
But  this  evening,  I  went  out  to  examine  it  again, 
curious  in  my  mind  to  learn  the  cause  of  its  death. 
I  approached  it  with  no  thought  of  caution  and  for 
a  moment  was  surprised  to  find  that  it  had  shifted 
from  the  position  in  which  I  had  seen  it  last.  As 
I  stooped  down  to  look  at  it  more  closely,  I  dis- 
covered that  the  earth  had  been  scratched  away 
at  each  side  of  its  body.  Then  I  guessed  what  was 
happening.  The  sexton-beetle  was  doing  his  work 
and,  taking  up  a  position  as  near  as  I  dared,  I 
waited  and  watched  the  burial  of  one  of  God's 
creatures  over  which  no  service  was  read  other 
3  23 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

than  by  the  voice  of  Nature.  Never  have  I  at- 
tended a  more  solemn  or  inspiring  burial  before. 
It  was  as  though  God  himself,  who  counts  the 
sparrows  when  they  fall,  had  leant  his  hand  to  the 
spade  to  consecrate  this  little  creature  to  the  earth. 

There  is  nothing  very  beautiful  about  the  bury- 
ing-beetle,  with  its  large  head  by  means  of  which 
it  scoops  out  the  ground  beneath  the  body  it  inters. 
Its  brown  wings,  the  orange  coloured  spots  and 
bands  upon  the  abdomen  make  it  in  no  way  re- 
markable. Only  the  stag-beetle  amongst  its  kind 
seems  beautiful  to  me.  But  the  sexton  is  surely 
the  most  interesting  of  these  insects  you  may  come 
across. 

With  the  utmost  care,  working  incessantly  and 
methodically,  the  mould  was  slowly  scooped  away 
from  under  the  robin's  body.  Almost  impercepti- 
bly it  was  lowered  below  the  level  of  the  ground. 
When  I  left  them,  their  excavations  were  almost 
half  an  inch  deep.  The  little  robin  was  sinking 
to  its  last  rest. 

At  tea-time,  Georgina  asked  me  what  were  my 
thoughts. 

"I  was  thinking,"  said  I,  "of  my  sermon  for 
next  Sunday." 

24 


Georgina 


This  was  true  enough  for  it  to  be  the  truth. 
I  was  thinking  how  I  would  speak  about  the  dignity 
of  Nature  as  compared  with  the  need  of  it  in  men. 
But  had  I  told  her  the  whole  truth,  I  should  have 
had  to  speak  of  the  dead  robin  and  it  was  not 
necessary  to  distress  her  mind. 

I  was  indeed  thinking  of  the  sexton-beetles,  still 
at  their  work,  how  silently  and  without  the  need 
of  ceremony  they  laboured  at  their  task.  It  is  our 
custom  to  have  our  bodies  laid  to  rest  with  candle, 
bell  and  book.  But  surely  God  must  receive  the 
poor  body  he  has  made  as  willingly,  if  not  more  so, 
when  it  is  given  silently  and  without  vanity  to  the 
grave. 

Perhaps  it  is  heresy  for  me,  a  clergyman,  to 
say  this,  but  I  think  I  would  sooner  that  two 
honest  men  dug  silently  my  grave  and  laid  me 
down  when  all  the  village  was  asleep. 


MAY  i 


HE  vicar  of  Maple  St.  Dennis  came 
over  to  see  me  this  morning  shortly 
after  breakfast.  I  went  into  the  little 
room  which  is  my  study  and  found 
him  there.  I  believe  Georgina  uses 
the  study  more  than  I. 

"Good-morning,      Mr.      Hanbury," 
said  he. 

"Good-morning,"  I  replied,  and  we 
shook  hands. 

"I'm  in  a  very  difficult  position," 
he  informed  me,  and  I  told  him  how 
much  I  regretted  to  hear  it. 

"Well,"  he  continued,  "I  came  to  you,  because 
with  your  last  living  in  the  East  End,  I  thought 
perhaps  you  might  have  come  across  a  similar  case 
and  could  assist  me  with  your  advice." 

I  told  him  it  was  very  good  of  him  to  think  of 
me  and  that  if  in  any  way  I  could  help  him  most 
certainly  I  would.  I  remember,  as  I  said  that,  a 
hope  flashing  across  my  mind  that  it  would  not 
occupy  too  much  of  my  time.  I  wanted  to  see  the 
bury  ing-beetles  at  the  conclusion  of  their  work.  I 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

admit  I  confess  this  to  mortify  myself.  It  was  a 
thought  I  put  aside  as  quickly  as  it  came. 

"What  is  it?"  said  I. 

He  explained  then  how  the  doctor  of  Maple  St. 
Dennis  had  sent  word  to  him  that  morning  that 
an  old  woman  in  the  village  was  dying  and  wanted 
him  to  administer  the  Holy  Sacrament  to  her  be- 
fore she  passed  away. 

"The  doctor  assures  me,"  he  continued,  "that  I 
had  better  come  as  quickly  as  possible,  since  she 
cannot  last  out  the  day." 

"Well?"  said  I — for  quite  honestly  I  could  not 
see  his  difficulty  then. 

"Well,  my  dear  sir,"  said  he,  "of  course,  don't 
you  see,  I've  had  my  breakfast.  It's  not  even  as 
if  I  took  a  light  meal  at  that  hour  of  the  day. 
Breakfast  is  my  most  hearty  meal.  I  am  an  early 
riser.  In  fact  I  take  a  constitutional  at  that  hour. 
It  gives  me  an  appetite.  Now  you  see  how 
can  I  possibly  consecrate  the  Bread  and  Wine 
under  such  circumstances?  Had  I  just  had  a 
piece  of  toast  and  a  cup  of  tea,  it  might  have  been 
different." 

"What  did  you  have?"  said  I. 

"Well — I — I  had  some  porridge — bacon  and  at 
32 


'Well — 7 — 7  had  some  porridge — bacon  and  at  least  two 
poached  eggs.    So  you  see  how  impossible  it  is.'" 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

least  two  poached  eggs.  So  you  see  how  impossible 
it  is." 

"You  mean,"  said  I,  "that  it  is  impossible  to  give 
the  old  lady  Holy  Communion?" 

"Impossible  for  me — certainly — perhaps — have 
you  had  your  breakfast?" 

"I  have,"  said  I,  "and  it  was  not  merely  toast 
and  tea,  but  I  shall  be  only  too  willing  to  officiate. 
The  greatest  service  of  the  Church  to  me  is  the 
comfort  She  can  bring.  Shall  I  come  with  you 
now?" 

"If  you've  had  a  similar  meal  to  what  I  have," 
he  replied,  "I'm  afraid  I  cannot  permit  it  in  my 
parish.  No  doubt  your  ideas  are  more  low  church 
than  mine.  I  have  nothing  to  say  if  you  should 
wish  to  do  it  here,  of  course.  But  in  Maple  St. 
Dennis,  I,  and  I  think  I  can  speak  for  my  parish- 
ioners as  well,  think  differently." 

I  paused  a  moment  before  I  answered. 

"Well — there  is  the  reserved  Sacrament,"  said  I. 
"You  can  get  that  in  London  if  you  send  a  tele- 
gram for  it  at  once.  You  would  have  it  here  by 
this  afternoon." 

"How?"  he  asked. 

"It  could  be  sent  with  a  messenger  by  train?" 

35 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"You  don't  mean  travel  in  an  ordinary  carriage 
with  passengers  who  might  be  making  coarse  jests, 
or  speaking  irreverently — with  people  even  who 
might  be  of  other  religious  thought — some  perhaps 
with  no  religion  at  all." 

"The  old  lady  is  dying,"  said  I,  "and  death  will 
not  wait." 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  replied,  "you  can't  help  me. 
I'm  sorry.  We  see  things  evidently  from  different 
points  of  view." 

I  walked  to  the  gate  of  our  little  drive  with  him. 
Then,  as  I  turned  away,  I  stepped  into  the  thicket 
of  laurels.  The  robin  had  been  buried.  I  could 
just  see  the  marks  of  the  new  mould  showing  the 
spot  where  it  lay.  The  beetles  had  deposited  the 
eggs  of  their  young  in  its  body  and  there  anew  the 
young  life  would  come  forth  again.  The  wind  just 
trembled  the  laurel  leaves.  Then  everything  was 
still.  Without  ceremony,  without  vanity,  the  last 
office  had  been  performed.  God  had  taken  His 
hand  from  the  spade. 


MAY  10 


'FAMILY  of  long-tailed  tits  have 
visited  the  garden.  At  the  end  of 
last  month  I  heard  the  cry  of  their 
pass-word  which,  when  they  are 
upon  their  travels,  keeps  the  brood 
together.  Zit-zit — Zit-zit — I  heard 
it  all  about  the  garden.  One  of 
the  males  came  fearlessly  to  the 
window-sill  of  my  study.  How 
strangely  like  some  old  men  they 
are.  The  loose  grey  feathers  about  their  heads, 
the  short  hooked  beak  add,  I  suppose,  to  the  comi- 
cal appearance  of  old  age. 

I  called  to  Georgina.  She  came  in  with  her 
duster  in  her  hand  to  look  at  him.  When  she 
saw  him  she  laughed. 

"I  suppose  that's  how  you'll  laugh  at  me  one 
day,"  said  I. 

"We  shall  be  laughing  together  then,"  said  she. 

That  is  more  than  a  week  ago  and  I  still  hear 

the  cry — zit-zit — about  the  garden.     I  believe — or 

is  it  that  I  hope — they  have  come  to  stay.    Perhaps 

they  are  going  to  build.    There  will  be  few  cater- 

4  39 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

pillars  on  my  rose  trees  this  summer  and  I  shall 
pay  nothing  for  their  extermination.  God  has  His 
gardeners. 

I  can  imagine  when  all  the  world  was  a  garden 
and  man  had  not  been  born.  Every  creature  then 
must  have  been  turned  to  His  account.  I  wonder 
if  Hodgins  or  his  like  are  better  substitutes.  I 
prefer  the  appearance  of  the  long-tailed  tit. 

But  I  hope  it  is  true.  I  hope  they  really  are 
going  to  build  in  the  garden.  It  seems  almost  too 
much  to  expect  that  after  all  their  journey  ings 
throughout  the  winter,  they  should  select  this  spot 
so  that  I  may  watch  all  those  interesting  prepara- 
tions of  the  home.  For  the  nest  of  the  long-tailed 
tit  is  a  most  elaborate  undertaking.  She  will  spend 
as  long  as  three  weeks  in  the  making  of  it.  I  have 
known  her,  when  the  building  operations  did  not 
go  to  her  satisfaction,  take  nearly  as  many  as  four. 

I  used  to  notice  the  houses  they  built  in  the 
suburbs  of  London;  dwellings  to  last  a  man  his 
lifetime  and  in  two  months  time  from  the  laying 
of  the  first  brick,  there  was  a  family  in  occupation. 

They  did  not  build  like  that  when  this  old 
vicarage  was  set  down  amidst  the  beech  trees.  Far 
away  across  the  rolling  plains  of  cornland,  I  see 

40 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

sometimes   from  my  bedroom  window  the  white 
smoke  of  a  train  as  it  winds  in  and  out  between 


The  Long-tailed  Tit 


the  dark  blue  belts  of  trees.  That  I  should  think 
is  the  only  difference  in  the  landscape  since  the 
first  vicar  of  Bramlingham  looked  out  of  his  bed- 
room window  across  the  country  side. 

When  I  look  at  the  frame  work  of  great  oak 
41 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

beams  hewn  laboriously  with  an  axe  to  give  them 
simple  shape,  I  often  wish  there  was  such  leisure 
in  life  now  as  there  was  then.  All  these  inventions 
of  modern  science  merely  put  on  the  hands  of  the 
clock  to  hasten  the  day's  completion.  But  it  does 
not  alter  time.  The  day  is  just  as  long  as  ever  it 
was  and  the  labourer's  work  is  not  over  till  the  sun 
has  set. 

But  the  long-tailed  tit  builds  just  the  same  as 
ever  she  did.  With  just  as  much  care  she  selects 
the  lichen  for  the  walls  of  her  dome-shaped  nest 
and  knits  it  all  together  with  wool;  with  just  as 
much  trouble  she  felts  together  the  inside  with  rain- 
proof dome  of  cobweb  and  of  moss,  laying  her 
carpet  of  the  finest  feathers  she  can  find. 

We,  who  are  ever  progressing,  outgrow  the 
knowledge  we  have  had  that  we  may  attain  to 
some  other  knowledge  beyond  our  reach.  If  it 
were  not  that  amongst  all  the  wisdom  which  we 
lose,  we  had  retained  the  knowledge  of  God,  I  sup- 
pose the  world  would  have  grown  old  indeed. 

The  whole  family  of  long-tailed  tits  have  just 
flown  past  my  window  now.  Straight  as  an  arrow 
they  follow  one  behind  the  other  and  if  any  should 
stray,  the  cry,  zit-zit,  brings  him  back  again  into 

42 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

line.  So  they  have  traversed  miles  and  miles  of 
country  all  the  winter  through. 

Here  in  these  parts  they  call  them  long-tail  mag. 
Indeed  the  long-tailed  tit  has  more  nick-names  than 
any  other  bird  I  know.  "Bottle  Tom,"  I  have 
heard  him  called,  "poke-pudding,"  "mum-ruffin," 
and  I  believe  there  are  many  other  names  by  which 
he  is  known. 

The  female  has  flown  past  my  window  again. 
She  carried  a  piece  of  moss  in  her  beak.  I  must 
go  and  tell  Georgina.  The  long-tailed  tits  are 
going  to  build. 


MAY  18 


URING  the  Easter  holidays,  Diana 
informed  me  that  she  has  seen 
a  white  sparrow  in  the  nut-trees 
near  the  orchard.  I  am  sure  it 
is  a  morbid  instinct  which  ex- 
cites our  interest  in  the  abnormal. 
A  thing  is  not  real  because  it 
happens. 

Reading  my  paper  the  other 
morning,  I  chanced  for  a  moment  to  look  at  the 
reviews  of  recent  novels.  These  do  not  interest 
me,  for  I  take  no  pleasure  in  the  reading  of  the 
books  themselves.  Nature  herself  seems  so  full  of 
stories,  stories  of  romance,  of  tragedy,  of  comedy, 
of  what  you  will,  that  I  for  one  should  become  a 
spendthrift  of  my  time  were  I  to  study  them.  I 
know  there  are  many  who  choose  to  have  life  put 
before  them  rather  than  see  it  for  themselves.  I 
do  not  grudge  the  novel  to  them.  Georgina  reads 
them  sometimes.  Sometimes  she  recounts  to  me 
the  stories  which  they  tell.  How  strange  it  must 
be  to  have  to  invent,  when  life  itself  is  so  full  of 
stories  that  no  one  ever  has  told. 

47 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

However,  I  read  one  of  these  reviews.  The 
author,  so  the  critic  said,  had  marred  his  work  by 
too  desultory  an  attention  to  realism.  I  remember 
that  struck  me  as  an  odd  phrase.  I  wondered  why 
the  critic  had  gone  so  far  out  of  his  way  to  think 
of  it.  "Mr.  So  and  so,"  he  continued,  "relies  too 
much  upon  coincidence." 

I  don't  know  whether  that  is  a  usual  thing  for 
critics  to  say,  but  it  struck  me  as  being  full  of 
illumination.  The  author  had  not  paid  sufficient 
attention  to  realism — he  had  relied  too  much  upon 
coincidence.  Now  that  exactly  describes  what  I 
feel  about  things  abnormal  in  nature.  They  are 
coincidences  which  happen,  but  they  are  not  real. 
There  are  far  more  unpleasant  and  unsightly  forms 
of  coincidence  than  albinism  and  people  are  mor- 
bidly curious  and  interested  even  in  them. 

When  I  was  a  child  I  recollect  being  taken  to 
a  travelling  show  of  human  freaks.  The  horror 
of  it  comes  back  to  my  mind  still  clearly  whenever 
I  think  of  it.  My  nurse  who  brought  me  there 
seemed  to  take  a  great  delight  in  all  she  saw.  And 
that  is  the  mind  of  a  great  many  persons. 

I,  too,  found  myself  particularly  interested  when 
Diana  told  me  of  the  white  sparrow.  I  have  seen 

48 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

a  blackbird  with  a  white  wing,  but  never  a  complete 
specimen  of  albinism.  I  asked  Hodgins  had  he 
seen  it;  he  was  more  in  the  garden  than  any  of  us. 
He  looked  surprised  and  told  me  he  had  not.  He 
had  never  heard,  he  said,  of  such  a  thing.  Where- 
upon I  explained  to  him  how  in  an  albino,  Nature 
fails  to  supply  the  necessary  pigment  to  the  skin 
and  that  a  blackbird  has  been  known  to  be  pure 
white. 

It  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  that  he  was  not 
interested.  I  could  have  said  a  lot  more  upon  the 
subject,  but  he  showed  me  by  unmistakable  little 
signs  that  he  wanted  to  get  back  to  his  work.  He 
spat  in  his  hands  three  times  and  handled  his  spade. 
After  the  third  time  I  went  away.  I  would  never 
hinder  any  man  in  his  industry.  But  I  confess 
his  want  of  interest  had  surprised  me,  for  Hod- 
gins  is  by  way  of  being  a  bird  fancier  himself. 
He  has  many  canaries  in  cages  at  his  cottage 
and  appears  to  bestow  the  greatest  care  upon 
them. 

Diana  has  gone  back  again  to  school  now  and 
the  white  sparrow  has  not  been  seen  since.  Never- 
theless, I  have  discovered  all  about  it.  Georgina 
came  to  my  study  this  afternoon  and  the  moment 

49 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  saw  her  face,  I  knew  that  something  was  the 
matter. 

"My  dear,  what  has  happened?"  I  asked. 

I  believe  some  people  think  it  foolish,  but  we 
always  call  each  other — my  dear. 

"Mrs.  Naismith  has  just  called,"  said  she.  "She 
has  seen  the  white  sparrow  and  she  asked  Wey- 
burn,  their  gardener,  about  it." 

"Diana  was  right  then,"  I  replied.  "She'll  have 
a  lot  of  observation,  that  child,  when  she  grows 
up." 

."Yes,  but  it  was  not  an  albino,"  said  Georgina. 
"Weyburn  told  Mrs.  Naismith  that  one  day  when 
he  and  the  boy  were  over  here,  helping  with  the 
pea-sticks,  Hodgins  told  them  that  he  had  caught 
a  sparrow  in  a  trap  and  painted  it  white.  He  was 
boasting  about  it." 

"Caught  a  sparrow,"  I  repeated,  "and  painted 
it  white !"  And  then  there  flashed  across  my  mind 
how  a  few  weeks  ago  I  had  told  Hodgins  to  paint 
the  white  gate  at  the  end  of  the  drive. 

"When  did  he  do  this?"  I  asked. 

"A  few  weeks  ago,"  replied  Georgina. 

It  was  all  I  could  do  then  to  keep  my  mind  from 
condemning  him  already. 

50 


'She  asked  Weyburn,  their  gardener, 
about  it.' " 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

For  a  few  moments  we  looked  at  each  other  in 
silence  and  then  Georgina  said,  "I  never  have  liked 
Hodgins." 

"But  we  don't  know  that  he  did  it,"  said  I. 
"We've  only  Weyburn's  word  for  it." 

"And  the  boy's,"  said  she.  "You  don't  think  he 
hasn't  done  it,  do  you  ?"  she  added. 

"I  don't  want  to  think,"  said  I,  and  I  took  her 
hand.  "I'll  speak  to  him  tomorrow.  Remember, 
he's  fond  of  birds.  He  has  at  least  five  pet 
canaries." 

"I've  thought  of  that,"  she  replied. 

"Well — you  must  keep  on  thinking  of  it,"  said  I. 

"I  do,"  said  she.     "It  only  makes  it  worse." 

It  makes  it  all  the  worse  to  me,  too.  I  wish  I 
were  not  so  certain  of  his  guilt.  Now,  had  it  been 
Acres,  we  neither  of  us  should  have  believed  it  for 
a  moment. 


iiT  is  said  of  the  red-backed  shrike  that  it 
flays  the  bodies  of  its  victims  and  hangs 
up  their  skins  near  its  nest  as  the 
trophies  of  victory.  That  the  butcher- 
bird, as  he  is  best  known,  lives  upon 
the  young  of  other  birds  and,  stealing 
them  from  the  nest,  impales  them  upon 
the  points  of  thorns  in  its  larder,  is 
established.  I  found  such  a  larder 
myself  last  year  in  a  thick  blackthorn 
bush  in  the  midst  of  the  spinney  near 
our  orchard.  Two  young  sparrows  and  a  half- 
fledged  white-throat  were  thus  suspended  by  the 
side  of  the  nest  in  which  I  found  four  young  shrikes 
exhibiting  signs  of  a  voracious  appetite. 

For  a  moment  at  the  sight  of  it,  I  was  stirred  to 
an  accusation  of  cruelty.  Those  little  bodies  with 
the  blackthorn  through  their  necks,  shrivelled  and 
still,  seemed  so  wanton  an  act  of  Nature,  that  I 
turned  away  and  walked  home,  wondering  why  the 
spirit  of  living  and  letting  live  had  come  so  late 
into  the  world. 

"How  many  years,"  said  I  to  myself,  "must  the 
57 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

earth  have  been  in  darkness  before  the  coming  of 
the  Son  of  God!" 

It  was  at  our  midday  meal  that  very  day  that 
Georgina  looked  across  the  table  at  me  and  said : 

"Why  does  Suskind  make  such  a  show  of  all 
the  meat  he  has  for  sale?  I  suppose  every  butcher 
does  it,  but  why  must  they?  We  know  what  they 
sell.  There's  no  necessity  for  them  to  hang  up 
their  dead  bodies  on  hooks  right  in  front  of  the 
shop." 

Perhaps  it  was  a  long  time  before  I  answered, 
because,  presently,  I  heard  Georgina  repeat  her 
question. 

"Why  is  it?"  said  she. 

"Because  the  earth's  still  in  darkness,"  I  replied. 
"One  of  these  days  perhaps  we  shall  know  how  to 
live  without  preying  upon  each  other.  One  of 
these  days  we  may  grow  to  be  ashamed  of  taking 
life.  There's  still  too  much  of  the  Old  Testament 
in  us — still  too  little  of  the  New." 

Yet,  however  Suskind  may  be  like  the  red-backed 
shrike  in  the  habit  of  dressing  his  window,  he  does 
not  lure  his  victim  with  cunning.  I  have  read  that 
this  characteristic  is  questionable  in  the  red-backed 
shrike.  But  I  have  proved  it  to  be  true. 

58 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

Last  year  I  made  close  observation  of  the  shrike 
that  had  built  in  the  blackthorn  bush  in  the  spinney. 
When  the  brood  was  well  advanced  and  more 
voracious  in  their  appetites  than  ever,  I  saw  the 
female  on  one  occasion  from  my  hiding-place, 
seated,  in  concealment  such  as  mine,  behind  a 
cluster  of  bramble  leaves.  She  sat  perfectly  still — 
as  still  as  I — and  I  wondered  what  her  intentions 
were. 

Presently  I  heard  the  notes  of  the  yellow  ham- 
mer. Yellow  ammer  as  it  should  properly  be  spelt. 
The  song  is  unmistakable.  It  is  as  though  she 
were  begging  from  door  to  door  and  dared  not 
ask  too  much.  Indeed  in  Devonshire,  the  country 
folk  call  her,  "Little-bread-and-no-cheese."  Her 
song  is  just  like  that.  "A  little  bit  of  bread 
and  no  cheese,"  is  her  plaint,  all  on  one  note  until 
at  the  last  word  it  drops  into  a  minor  third 
below. 

I  looked  with  caution  at  my  watch.  True  to  the 
custom  of  her  song  it  was  nearly  three  o'clock. 
And  then  I  gazed  about  me  to  see  where  she  could 
be.  My  eye  as  it  wandered  here  and  there  came 
back  again  to  the  shrike.  Just  at  that  moment 
the  song  broke  out  afresh.  I  saw  the  swelling  of 

59 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

the  shrike's  throat,  the  beak  just  opened  to  emit 
the  notes.  She  was  imitating  the  yellow  hammer 
to  lure  the  young  birds  to  her  grasp.  I  could  not 


The  Red-backed  Shrike 


believe  it  at  first  until  at  the  faint  chirping  noise 
in  the  bushes,  I  saw  her  swoop  forwards.  A  mo- 
ment later  she  had  brought  back  a  young  bird  in 
her  claws. 

Perhaps  I  moved  then,  for  taking  sudden  fright, 
she  flew  away,  though  never  dropping  her  prey. 

60 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

The  next  morning  I  found  a  young  yellow  hammer 
hanging  in  her  larder. 

Not  only  had  she  imitated  the  voice,  but  had 
chosen  the  very  hour  at  which  the  yellow  hammer's 
note  is  most  times  heard. 

"Suskind  does  not  do  things  like  that,"  said  I  to 
myself.  I  don't  know  why  I  felt  it  necessary  to 
defend  Suskind  against  my  own  conscience.  He 
does  perhaps  make  an  unnecessary  show  of  the 
meat  he  sells,  but  he  is  an  honest,  open-hearted 
fellow. 

I  come  back  to  this  note-book  of  mine  for  the 
second  time  today  to  add  that  I  have  spoken  to 
Hodgins  about  the  white  sparrow.  I  spoke  as 
kindly  as  I  could,  not  wishing  that  he  should  see 
for  one  moment  the  suspicion  which,  despite  all  my 
efforts,  was  harbouring  in  my  mind.  He  came  into 
my  study. 

"I  hear  from  Weyburn,"  said  I,  for  I  had  ques- 
tioned Weyburn  myself  first,  "that  a  little  while 
ago  you  caught  a  sparrow  in  a  trap  and  painted  it 
white." 

"It's  a  lie,"  said  he  promptly. 

I  wished  he  had  not  been  so  prompt.  If  this 
was  the  first  he  had  heard  of  it,  it  seemed  to  me 

61 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

that  he  should  have  shown  more  surprise.  My 
suspicions  grew  deeper.  I  felt  I  knew  he  had  done 
it  then  and  the  more  I  knew,  the  more  I  kept  sus- 
picion from  my  voice. 

"Why,  then,"  said  I,  "does  he  tell  this  story 
about  you?" 

"  'Cos  'e  'as  a  grudge,  I  s'pose,"  he  replied. 

"Well — what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?"  I 
asked.  "It's  not  a  nice  thing  to  have  said  about 
one.  I  think  I'm  right  in  saying  it's  a  punishable 
offence.  What  are  you  going  to  do?" 

He  replied  that  he  did  not  know. 

"And  you  say  it's  not  true?"  said  I. 

"No— it's  a  lie." 

"But  the  boy  corroborates  his  story,"  said  I. 

I  was  quite  sure  he  had  done  it. 

"Can't  'elp  what  the  boy  said,"  replied  he.  "  'e's 
been  told  to  say  it." 

"Then  I'm  to  understand  that  what  Weyburn's 
told  me  is  not  true." 

"Yes — it's  a  lie,"  he  repeated. 

I  did  not  like  his  face  as  he  said  that.  But  then 
I  have  never  liked  it.  I  tried  to  think  that  until 
that  moment  I  had. 

"Do  you  know  that  he  says  you  told  him  this 
62 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

about  the  sparrow  just  at  about  the  time  you  were 
painting  the  gate  at  the  top  of  the  drive — painting 
it  with  white  paint?" 

He  looked  sullenly  at  me.  I  suppose  my  per- 
sistence was  leading  him  to  realise  that  I  knew  his 
guilt.  Then  suddenly  his  face  lit  up  with  malice. 

"Did  Weyburn  tell  you  'e  tarred  a  sparrow?" 
he  asked  me  and  in  the  answering  expression  in  my 
eyes  must  have  known  how  fatal  a  step  that  was. 

"You've  said  a  very  foolish  thing,"  said  I. 

Sullenly  he  asked  me  why. 

"Well — do  you  wish  me  to  believe  what  you 
say?" 

"Yus." 

"That's  the  truth?" 

"Yus." 

"Then  why  am  I  not  to  believe  Weyburn  ?  Why 
is  your  story  the  truth  and  his  a  lie?" 

I  knew  I  had  caught  him  then.  He  knew  it,  too. 
His  face  grew  whiter  as  he  tried  to  meet  my  eyes. 

"Do  you  wish  me  to  believe  it?"  I  persisted. 

"Yus,"  said  he. 

"Then  I  must  believe  Weyburn,"  I  replied. 

"You  can  believe  what  you  like,"  said  he. 
"Weyburn  tarred  a  sparrow." 

63 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"And  you  painted  yours  white?" 

There  was  a  moment's  pause.  He  looked  at  me 
to  see  how  firm  was  my  mind  in  that  statement. 
Then  he  gave  in. 

"Well — I  did  paint  a  sparrow  if  yer  want  to 
know,"  he  declared. 

"I  knew  it,"  I  exclaimed — and,  whether  it  be 
to  my  shame  or  not,  a  thrill  of  pleasure  passed 
through  me  to  know  that  I  had  forced  him  to 
confess.  "That's  all  we  need  say,"  I  added.  "You 
can  go.  I  can  have  no  one  in  my  service  who  is 
cruel.  You  can  go." 

He  turned  on  his  heel,  but  at  the  door  he  looked 
back. 

"Any'ow,  Weyburn  tarred  a  sparrow,"  said  he. 

I  nodded  my  head. 

Georgina  was  waiting  for  me  in  the  drawing- 
room.  Her  cup  of  tea  was  cold. 

"Well?"  she  exclaimed. 

"He  did  it,"  said  I. 

"He  admitted  it?" 

"Yes." 

"However  did  you  get  him  to  ?" 

"I  talked  to  him  very  quietly,"  said  I.  "I  didn't 
let  him  think  I  was  suspicious,  but  I  kept  on  at  it 

64 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

till  he  fell  into  a  mistake.  Then  it  was  all  up 
with  him." 

Suddenly  as  I  said  this,  I  thought  of  the  cunning 
of  the  red-backed  shrike,  the  voice  she  imitates  to 
lure  her  prey. 

It  is  I  who  need  defence — not  Suskind. 


MAY. 


,ERHAPS  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
women  to  be  superstitious.  I 
have  found  traces  of  superstition 
in  the  most  sensibly-minded  of 
women.  Even  Georgina  is  not 
exempt  from  it.  This  year  she 
heard  the  cuckoo  before  the 
nightingale  and  told  me  about  it  with  a  quiet  smile 
as  though  to  assure  me  she  would  take  no  notice 
of  it. 

"But  you  don't  really  mind,  do  you?"  said  I. 
For  answer  she  just  quoted  me  a  passage  from 
her  favourite  Chaucer: 

"It  was  a  common  tale 
That  it  were  gode  to  here  the  Nightingale 
Moche  rathir  *  than  the  lewde  -j-  Cuckowe  singe." 

I  would  always  firmly  put  down  superstition. 
It  belonged  to  the  age  when  the  mind  of  man  was 
in  the  darkness  of  idolatry.  But  how  can  I  blame 
Georgina?  There  is  beauty  even  in  the  faults  of 
those  we  love.  So  it  seems  to  me  is  the  great 
reality  in  forgiveness  of  sins.  God  loves  us  all. 
*  Earlier,  f  Unskilful. 

69 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

But  certainly  the  cuckoo  did  arrive  early  this 
year.  We  were  walking  down  the  boundary  lane 
in  the  beginning  of  April  when  first  those  two 
strange  notes  fell  on  my  ear.  E  flat  is  the  first, 
I  believe,  and  almost  invariably  C  natural  the 
second.  It  was  then  Georgina  told  me  how  she  had 
heard  him  two  days  before.  She  must  really  be 
very  superstitious,  for  she  had  said  no  word  about 
it  until  then. 

What  a  good-for-nothing  fellow  he  is,  that 
cuckoo — an  inveterate  wanderer  without  a  home. 
Seldom  are  the  male  and  female  ever  seen  together 
and  the  latter,  as  everybody  knows,  builds  no  nest 
but  from  one  place  to  another  wanders  in  search 
of  what  food  she  can  find. 

The  cuckoo  I  have  seen  flying  about  our  meadows 
this  year,  has  been  followed  persistently  and  re- 
spectfully by  a  pipit.  I  have  heard  of  this  un- 
accountable fact  with  regard  to  these  little  birds  be- 
fore, but  never  witnessed  it  until  this  year.  Wher- 
ever the  cuckoo  flies,  the  pipit  follows  at  a  re- 
spectful distance.  When  the  cuckoo  settles  in  one 
tree,  the  pipit  rests  in  another  close  by.  The  differ- 
ence in  size  between  them  makes  them  a  ludicrous 
pair. 

70 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  have  tried  in  vain  to  discover  the  reason  of 
this.  It  defies  me  at  every  turn.  For  it  is  in  the 
meadow  pipit's  nest  that  the  cuckoo  most  often  lays 


The  Cuckoo 

her  eggs ;  yet  this  little  creature,  with  a  faithfulness 
that  almost  amounts  to  fascination,  seeks  the  com- 
pany of  the  interloper,  even  to  the  extent  of  ignor- 
ing her  own  duties  of  the  day. 

I  often  wonder  will  the  cuckoo  ever  learn  better 
habits,  ever  follow  the  example  of  industriousness 
6  71 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

which  is  set  her  by  the  various  birds  in  whose  nests 
she  lays  her  eggs.  She  has  the  choice  of  many, 
for  the  hedge-sparrow,  the  robin,  the  sedge-warbler, 
the  red-start,  the  skylark,  chaffinch  and  greenfinch 
all  of  them  at  some  time  or  another  have  shown 
her  in  their  various  perfect  ways  how  a  home 
should  be  made.  In  all  of  these  she  lays  her  eggs. 
I  have  heard  of  a  cuckoo's  egg  being  found  in  the 
nest  of  a  wren. 

But,  no,  the  hundreds  of  years  have  gone  by 
since  Pliny  wrote  of  her  and  she  is  the  same 
vagabond  as  then.  She  will  never  change.  Vaga- 
bondage is  in  the  blood.  Yet  I  suppose  even  the 
wandering  spirit  brings  men  at  last  to  God.  How 
tired  of  it  all  they  must  be! 

We  have  been  without  a  gardener  since  Hodgins 
went  away.  I  can  find  nobody  in  Bramlingham  to 
take  his  place.  Now  at  last  I  think  I  have  dis- 
covered someone. 

"There's  a  man,"  said  Georgina  to  me  this  morn- 
ing, "who  wants  to  see  you.  He's  at  the  back  door. 
I'm  afraid  he's  a  tramp.  But  he's  got  a  nice  face." 

I  knew  that  meant  that  Georgina  liked  him  and 
hoped  I  would  give  him  something  wherewith  to 
help  him  on  his  way.  I  went  round  to  see  him. 

72 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

He  was  a  dirty-looking  fellow,  unshaved,  with 
shoddy  clothes.  But  I  quickly  saw  what  it  was 
that  Georgina  liked  in  him.  He  had  a  clear  and 
an  honest  eye  and  there  was  a  look  of  humour  in 
his  mouth.  When  straightaway  he  asked  me  for 
some  work  and  did  not  want  alms,  I  was  well  im- 
pressed with  him.  It  so  happened  that  I  had  plenty 
of  work  for  a  man  to  do. 

"Can  you  dig  in  the  garden  ?"  I  asked. 

There  were  few  things,  not  requiring  skilled 
labour,  which  he  could  not  do,  he  told  me. 

"When  you're  on  the  road,  like  as  I  am,"  said 
he,  "there's  a  poor  chance  for  you  if  you  can't  turn 
your  hand  to  anything." 

I  asked  him  why  he  chose  the  road. 

A  wry  smile  came  into  his  eyes. 

"T'ain't  choice,"  said  he.  "You  come  to  it  as 
I  did,  by  playin'  the  fool  when  you're  young.  I 
was  in  the  navy  once  and  I  used  to  think  time  was 
better  ashore  than  aboard.  I  stayed  ashore  past  my 
leave.  That's  what  started  me  on  the  road.  I  got 
sent  out  of  the  navy.  Then  I  had  to  look  for  work 
and  when  you  do  that  you  'ave  to  walk  to  find  it." 

Georgina  is  nearly  always  right  when  she  likes  or 
dislikes  a  man.  It  was  honest  of  him  to  tell  me 

73 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

he  had  been  turned  out  of  the  navy.  Another  man 
would  have  hidden  the  fact.  I  took  a  liking  to  him 
from  that  moment. 

"But  why  don't  you  get  regular  work?"  I  asked. 
I  was  determined  not  to  let  my  feelings  get  the 
better  of  my  judgment,  though  I  suppose  by  then 
I  had  decided  that  I  would  take  him  on. 

"Ever  tried  to  get  regular  work,  sir  ?"  he  replied. 

I  shook  my  head. 

"Well,  sir,  you  walk  for  two  or  three  days, 
more  sometimes,  along  the  road.  Your  beard  begins 
to  grow.  You  sleep  out  under  a  hedge  and  wake 
up  dirty  in  the  morning.  Then  you  set  off  again 
on  an  empty  stummick  and  wonder  where  you're 
goin'  to  get  your  next  bit  of  bread.  Then  you 
hear  there's  some  work  to  be  'ad  about  six  miles 
further  on  and  you  tighten  your  belt  a  bit  and  step 
it  out.  By  the  time  you  get  there  you're  not  lookin' 
the  sort  of  man  as  they'd  take  on  regular.  If  I 
could  get  regular  work,  sir,  I'd  never  go  near 
the  road  again.  A  free  and  easy  life  some  calls 
it — the  people  as  'ave  never  tried  what  it's  like. 
But  there  ain't  much  freedom  when  yer  stummick's 
at  yer  day  and  night.  As  for  easy !" 

He  looked  round  our  garden  at  the  rows  upon 
74 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

rows  of  peas  and  scarlet  runners,  at  the  lettuces 
swelling  below  their  waist  belts  of  bass  and  I  felt 
ashamed  of  all  my  plenty.  Certainly  we  know  but 
little  of  the  lives  of  others.  I  had  often  thought 
that  I  should  like  to  be  a  tramp.  It  has  always 
seemed  so  great  an  opportunity  for  the  studying  of 
Nature.  I  had  thought  of  putting  it  to  him  in  that 
way,  but  when  he  cast  his  eyes  about  our  well- 
stocked  garden,  the  suggestion  seemed  so  ludicrous, 
I  kept  the  thought  to  myself. 

"Well,  I'll  give  you  some  work,"  said  I.  After 
that  glance  of  his,  I  felt  I  could  not  well  do  other- 
wise. "There's  some  digging  in  the  garden  to  be 
done.  Would  you  like  to  start  at  once  ?" 

I  determined  not  to  tell  him  that  I  had  regular 
work  about  the  house;  not  certainly  on  our  very 
first  acquaintance.  But  in  my  mind  I  had  decided 
that  here  was  the  very  handy  man  we  needed.  "I 
will  save  him,"  I  said  to  myself,  "I  will  save  him 
from  the  road." 

"I'll  just  go  up,"  said  he,  "and  tell  a  friend  of 
mine  what  was  walking  with  me — I'll  just  go  and 
tell  him  I've  got  a  job  and  then  I'll  come  back." 

I  returned  to  the  house  quite  pleased,  with  a 
warm  feeling  of  satisfaction  in  my  mind. 

75 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Georgina,"  said  I,  "he'll  make  a  splendid  handy 
man.  He  can  turn  his  hand  to  anything.  We're 
going  to  save  him  from  the  road." 

"I  knew  you'd  like  his  face,"  said  she. 

Which  was  not  what  I  meant  at  all. 


JUNE  i 


HAVE  found  a  pipit's  nest  and  think  it 
must  be  the  same  one  that  was  fas- 
cinated by  the  cuckoo  I  saw  in  our 
meadows  last  week,  for  there  was  the 
cuckoo's  egg  along  with  four  others 
in  the  bottom  of  the  nest.  I  sup- 
pose if  the  cuckoo  did  not  lay  so  small  an  egg, 
she  would  never  be  able  so  successfully  to  practise 
her  deception  as  she  does.  I  think  also  in  this 
case,  the  cuckoo  must  have  laid  her  egg  on  the 
ground  and  then,  with  her  mouth,  have  deposited 
it  in  the  pipit's  nest,  when  the  female  was  away. 
The  structure  is  so  small  that  the  chances  would 
have  been  ten  to  one  against  her  ever  getting  it 
there  in  the  customary  manner. 

And  now  she  has  left  the  neighbourhood.  What 
a  vagabond  the  cuckoo  is ! 

Jesse  Webb  is  the  name  of  my  new  handy  man. 
He  has  been  working  for  three  days  in  the  garden 
and  in  that  time  has  accomplished  as  much  as 
Hodgins  would  have  done  in  a  week.  Both 
Georgina  and  I  are  delighted  with  him.  He  has 

79 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

cleaned  himself  up,  has  shaved  and  looks  a  different 
man. 

"I  liked  him  from  the  first,"  says  Georgina. 
"When  are  you  going  to  take  him  on  for  good?" 

I  am  going  to  speak  to  him  about  it  today.  I 
am  going  to  give  him  that  regular  work  which 
will  save  him  from  the  road.  Yet  the  road  has 
taught  him  something.  He  is  full  of  little  wisdoms 
and  expresses  them  in  a  most  humorous  way.  If 
only  people  would  give  these  men  a  chance,  I  feel 
sure  that  half  the  vagrants  in  this  country  would 
cease  to  exist.  For  Webb  is  not  by  nature  untidy 
or  unclean.  The  morning  after  I  had  engaged  him, 
paying  him  at  the  end  of  the  day,  he  came  back,  as 
I  said,  a  different  being.  He  even  had  so  much 
regard  for  his  appearance  as  to  stick  the  flower  of 
a  little  red  rose  in  the  band  of  his  cap.  Georgina 
was  the  first  to  notice  it. 

"It  makes  him  look  quite  smart,"  said  she.  "The 
colour  goes  beautifully  with  his  tanned  skin." 

It  certainly  gave  a  finish  to  his  appearance. 

I  have  just  been  out  into  the  garden  and  can 
find  Webb  nowhere.  He  told  me  yesterday  that 
he  had  had  to  walk  six  miles  before  he  could  find 

80 


The  Lark 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

lodging.  It  appears  they  will  not  give  a  bed  to  these 
men  of  the  road,  except  at  recognised  rest  houses. 

"But  you  can't  go  on  walking  twelve  miles  a 
day,"  said  I. 

"No,  sir,"  he  replied,  "it  ain't  goin'  to  make  me 
much  good  for  a  'ard  day's  work.  But  I've  tried 
every  place  around  here  and  they  won't  take  me." 

Now  Georgina  thinks  he  may  have  been  run 
over. 

I  am  going  out  into  the  village  to  enquire  whether 
anyone  has  seen  him. 

I  found  him  myself  in  the  Cap  and  Bells.  He 
was  drinking  a  glass  of  beer  and  smiled  at  me 
when  I  looked  in.  What  disappointments  there 
are  in  life!  I  told  him  to  come  outside,  that  I 
wanted  to  speak  to  him.  He  followed  me 
obediently. 

"Why  haven't  you  come  to  work  this  morning?" 
I  asked. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  he,  "I  'ad  to  walk  six  miles 
again  this  mornin'.  I  started  to  get  ready  at  'alf 
past  five.  There  was  the  clock  pointing  to  'alf 
past  five.  I  asked  for  a  cup  of  coffee  just  before 
I  started.  The  coffee  wasn't  ready  and  they 

83 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

brought  me  a  glass  of  beer.  Well,  I  felt  cold  in- 
side, sir,  so  I  took  it.  Then  I  got  talking  and 
presently  I  looked  again  at  the  clock  and  it  was  still 
'alf  past  five.  The  blessed  thing  wasn't  going,  sir. 
'Twas  'alf  past  six.  So  I  started  at  once  to  come 
along  'ere " 

"And  on  the  way?"  said  I. 

"Yes,  sir,  on  the  way  I  'ad  a  glass  or  two.  And 
then  it  seemed  to  me  well — what  did  it  matter.  I 
couldn't  get  here  in  time,  so  I  just  came  along 
and  sat  in  the  Cap  and  Bells.  I  was  going  down 
presently  to  get  my  things  and  then  I  was  goin' 
on." 

"Back  to  the  road?"  I  asked. 

"Back  to  the  road,"  said  he. 

"And  what  you  wanted,"  said  I,  "was  regular 
work.  Now  do  you  know  I  was  going  to  give 
you  regular  work?  I'd  taken  a  fancy  to  you." 

"Yes,  sir,"  he  replied,  "that's  what  I  thought. 
That  gent's  taken  a  fancy  to  you,  I  said — here's 
your  chance.  But  what's  the  good — the  road's  got 
'old  of  me.  I  couldn't  get  here  in  time.  I'd  lost 
me  day.  I  might  as  well  get  back  on  to  the  road 
again." 

"But  if  you'd  come  to  me— even  though  you 
84 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

were  late,  it  would  have  been  all  right.    Why  don't 
you  trust  your  fellow  creatures  more?" 

"  'Ave  you  ever  'ad  to  work  in  a  gang,  sir  ?" 

I  admitted  I  had  not. 

He  nodded  his  head.  He  evidently  thought  I 
had  not. 

"Well  now,"  said  I,  "suppose  I  give  you  still 
another  chance.  You  go  and  get  the  drink  out  of 
your  head  and  come  back  here  at  two  o'clock.  I'll 
give  you  work  for  three  weeks  and  if  you're  all 
right  then,  I'll  make  it  longer.  In  the  meantime, 
I'll  find  you  lodging." 

He  looked  straight  into  my  eyes  and  then,  pulling 
the  little  red  rose  out  of  his  cap,  he  dropped  it  on 
the  ground. 

"I'll  be  back  'ere  at  two  o'clock,  sir,"  said  he. 

But  three  o'clock  came  and  there  were  no  signs 
of  him.  I  went  back  apprehensively  to  the  Cap 
and  Bells.  Jesse  Webb  was  lying  on  the  seat  out- 
side lost  in  a  drunken  sleep.  The  landlord  came 
out  and  looked  at  him. 

"Those  sort  ain't  no  good,  sir,"  said  he.  "They're 
born  on  the  road  and  they  sticks  to  the  road.  You 
might'a  known  when  you  saw  him  put  that  rose  in 
his  cap." 

85 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Why?"  I  enquired.     "What  does  it  mean?" 

"It  means  as  'ow  they've  got  money  for  to  'ave  a 
good  old  drunk." 

I  turned  away  in  despair. 

"And  it  looked  so  well  in  his  cap,"  said  Georgina 
when  I  told  her. 


The  Pipit 

At  half  past  five  he  came  down  to  the  back  door 
to  get  a  piece  of  sacking  and  an  old  briar-wood 
walking  stick  he  had  left  behind.  I  met  him  slink- 
ing away  up  the  drive.  He  was  still  greatly  in- 
toxicated. 

"What  a  fool  you've  been,"  said  I. 
86 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Yeshir,"  he  said  thickly.  "Itsha  besht  chance  I 
shall  ever  'av." 

And  then  he  looked  at  me  with  the  twinkle  in 
his  eyes  which  Georgina  and  I  had  both  liked  so 
much  and  he  said,  "Mishsta  Young  draws  all  hish 
water  from — Canterbury,"  and  with  that  he  rolled 
away. 

I  don't  know  what  he  meant  by  it. 

As  he  opened  the  gate  onto  the  road,  I  saw  a 
man  join  him  and  they  walked  away  together. 

"The  cuckoo  and  the  pipit,"  thought  I.  Yet  the 
wandering  spirit  must  bring  a  man  at  last  to  God. 
How  tired  of  it  all  they  must  be! 


JUNE  3 


AST  night  Georgina  complained  of 
feeling  unwell.  She  went  early 
to  bed  and  I  settled  her  com- 
fortably on  the  pillows.  Later, 
I  crept  upstairs,  hoping  to  find 
her  asleep.  She  was  still  awake. 

"I've  been  listening  to  the 
nightingale,"  said  she.  "Has  he 
ever  been  so  late  before?" 

I  believe  she  was  thinking  of 
how  she  had  heard  the  cuckoo 
first. 

This  morning  her  temperature 
is  very  high.  I  have  sent  for  the  doctor.  I  wonder 
why  the  nightingale  was  so  late  this  year. 


JUNE  5 


HAVE  sent  for  Diana.    The  doctor  fears 
typhoid   fever.     He  took  me  down 
into   the   study   after  he   had   seen 
Georgina  yesterday  and,  when  I  had 
closed  the  door,  told  me  what  he  was 
afraid  was  her  complaint. 

"It  may  be  only  a  mild  form,"  said  he. 
"She's  got  a  good   constitution.      She 
may  throw  it  off  without  it  becoming  much  more 
serious  than  it  is  at  present." 
"It  is  serious  now?"  I  asked. 
"It  is,"  said  he. 

We  stood  in  silence  then  by  the  open  window; 
in  silence  as  one  does  when  there  are  th*  many 
things  one  dare  not  say.  The  sparrows  were  chat- 
tering loudly  in  the  ivy.  Around  the  house  the 
swifts  were  chasing  each  other  with  joyous 
screams,  exulting  in  their  power  of  wing,  rejoicing 
in  the  cloudless  sky.  Again  and  again  they  ap- 
peared, then  disappeared;  now  flying  high  above 
the  laburnum  trees,  now  flying  low  across  the 
purple  iris.  Even  there  in  that  room  we  could 

95 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

hear  the  purr  of  the  wind  in  their  wings  as  they 
swept  by. 

U 


"Somewhere  in  the  quickset  hedge  a 
robin  was  singing." 

Somewhere  in  the  quickset  hedge  a  robin  was 
singing;  the  deep-throated  blackbird  made  his 
sudden  flights.  We  could  hear  his  notes  like  water 
dropping  in  a  well.  Beyond  the  orchard  where 
the  spinney  lies,  I  saw  the  sharp  blue  spurt  of  a 

96 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

pigeon  from  the  wood  and  in  the  elm  tree  over  by 
the  gate  a  dove  sat  cooing  her  three  plaintive  notes. 

It  was  then  I  knew  how  much  the  joy  of  the 
world  lies  in  the  mind  of  a  man  to  find  it.  These 
were  the  sounds  to  which,  when  I  was  a  boy  at 
home  and  now,  during  these  four  years  since  we 
have  lived  in  Bramlingham,  I  have  listened  with 
such  thankfulness,  such  unquestioning  delight. 
They  have  been  to  me  the  very  voice  of  Nature 
singing,  as  we  sing  in  the  choir  on  Sunday,  to  the 
glory  of  God.  Yet  whereas  our  efforts  are  poor, 
though  they  may  not  be  vain,  this  choir  of  birds 
in  the  hedgerows  has  not  one  note  which  does 
not  harmonise  to  perfect  beauty. 

Often  I  notice  when  we  sing  the  Te  Deum  in 
church,  how  Suskind's  voice,  carried  away  no  doubt 
by  the  devotion  in  his  mind,  rises  loud  and  dis- 
cordant above  the  others.  From  where  I  sit,  I  can 
see  Georgina  and  I  know  by  her  face  that  he  is 
singing  out  of  tune.  My  own  ear  tells  me  of  it, 
too.  But  nothing  jars  me  when  the  birds  sing  in 
our  garden;  there  is  not  one  note  but  which  adds 
to  the  glad  beauty  of  it  all. 

And  yet,  this  morning,  as  I  stood  there  by  the 
open  window  with  the  doctor  in  silence  beside  me, 
the  beauty  had  all  gone  from  their  voices;  their 

97 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

gladness  hurt  me.  A  fear  that  Georgina  might  not 
live  was  disquieting  all  my  mind.  I  wanted  them 
to  sing  in  tune  with  my  dejection  and  there  they 
trilled  their  voices  in  sheer  joyousness  of  heart. 

"Do  you  hear  the  birds?"  said  I  at  last. 

"I  hear  them,"  said  he.  "They  must  be  a  joy  to 
you  after  London  and  the  East  End." 

"Are  they  a  joy  to  you?"  I  asked. 

"Why,  yes "  said  he.  "I  don't  know  a  lot 

about  them  like  you  do,  but,  my  goodness,  I  should 
miss  'em." 

I  had  it  on  my  lips  to  say  they  sung  of  nothing 
but  sadness  to  me  then,  but  just  kept  back  the 
words. 

"If  I  find  them  sad,"  I  said  to  myself,  "it  is  not 
their  trouble  of  which  they  sing — but  mine.  Why 
then  should  I  cast  down  the  heart  of  anyone  be- 
cause my  own  has  fallen  low?" 

It  is  not  our  duty  to  make  the  world.  Our 
duty  should  be  to  find  it  as  it  is.  Only  the  bravest 
and  the  brightest  heart  can  make  such  discovery 
as  that. 

I  will  just  creep  upstairs  and  see  whether 
Georgina  is  asleep.  If  she  is,  I  shall  drive  myself 

to  meet  Diana. 

98 


JUNE  8 


HE  last  few  days  have  been  days  of 
silence.  Diana  and  I  creep  about  the 
house,  speaking  only  in  whispers 
when  we  meet  in  the  passages,  talk- 
ing below  our  breath  when  occasion- 
ally we  meet  at  meals.  Alternately 
by  night,  we  take  our  watch  in  the 
sickroom  and,  by  the  dim  light  of  a 
bedside  lamp,  wait  anxiously  for  the 
first  glimmer  of  dawn. 

At  breakfast  yesterday,  Diana  said 
to  me: 

"Why  is  it  that  everything  seems  so  hopeless 
in  the  middle  of  the  night?" 
"Does  it  to  you,  too  ?"  said  I. 
"Yes — I  sit  there  by  the  side  of  Mother's  bed 
wondering  if  she  will  ever  be  well  again  and  then, 
as  soon  as  the  daylight  comes,  it  seems  all  different. 
I  feel  sure  she'll  get  all  right  again." 

It  is  the  same  with  me.  The  light  of  the  bed- 
side lamp  is  not  sufficient  to  keep  alive  any  promise 
of  hope  in  my  heart.  For  those  few  hours  of 
feebly-lighted  darkness,  I  am  as  one  struggling  in 

101 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

a   subterranean   stream.      Some    instinct   of    self- 
preservation  keeps  despair  at  arm's  length,  but  I 


"The  sparrows  are  the  first  to  chatter." 

am  not  master  of  my  hope  again  until  the  day 
is  lit  and  the  dawn  sweeps  fast  across  the  sky. 

1 02 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

And  how  wonderfully  the  dawn  does  come  these 
early  summer  mornings.  Before  you  could  tell  that 
the  blue  of  night  has  changed  to  grey,  the  birds 
have  turned  in  bed  and  twittered  in  their  sleep. 
It  may  be  still  an  hour  before  they  will  get  up,  that 
hour  of  semi-wakefulness  which  is  the  best  of 
sleep,  the  hour  you  know  you  are  still  sleeping  and 
yet  can  wake  at  will. 

The  sparrows  are  the  first  to  chatter.  In  the 
old  vine  that  grows  outside  the  window  of 
Georgina's  bedroom  they  build  and  raise  their 
three  and  four  broods  every  year.  There  is 
much  abuse  to  be  heard  concerning  this  rapa- 
cious creature,  but  I  for  one  would  stand  in  his 
defence. 

In  harvest  time  no  doubt  his  only  food  is  corn 
and  in  the  cornfields  can  effect  no  little  harm.  But 
who  counts  all  the  gardening  work  he  does  in 
winter  when  the  fields  are  bare?  His  only  feeding 
then  is  the  seed  of  weeds  combined  with  cater- 
pillars, worms  and  every  grub  which  he  can  find. 
I  always  think  of  that  when  I  see  him  busily  en- 
gaged upon  my  raspberry  canes.  Would  they  be 
so  good  if  he  had  not  eaten  the  wire-worms  in  the 
winter?  The  labourer  is  worthy  of  his  hire. 
8  103 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

And  for  their  quarrels,  too,  the  sparrows  are 
abused.  Those  sudden,  noisy  bickerings  in  the 
hedges  are  always  sparrows  settling  their  disputes. 
But  I  have  known  men  and  women — and  do  they 
make  it  up  so  soon? 

Yet  for  all  that  abuse  of  him,  the  sparrow  still 
confides  and  trusts  in  man.  In  waste  places,  he 
will  never  build  his  nest,  but  wherever  a  man  has 
set  his  habitation,  there  a  sparrow  choses  his  abode. 
I  like  this  trustfulness  and  would  not  kill  a  sparrow 
if  he  sat  and  ate  my  raspberries  before  my  eyes — 
and  he  does. 

I  have  just  put  down  as  they  came  to  me  my 
thoughts  of  the  other  morning,  when  I  sat  by 
Georgina's  bedside  watching  the  dawn  creeping  up 
out  of  the  east.  That  despair  of  which  Diana 
spoke  to  me  must  be  close  akin  to  the  note  of  pessi- 
mism which  runs  through  the  minds  of  many  people 
now.  I  wonder  how  much  light  has  got  to  do 
with  it. 

All  thought  today  comes  out  of  cities — for  that 
is  where  all  people  congregate.  Can  it  be  their 
thoughts  are  pessimistic  because  they  know  so  little 
of  sunshine  where  the  houses  lie  close  together? 
Can  it  be  because  their  day  is  most  times  lit  by  the 

104 


Diana 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

bedside  lamp?  Ts  pessimism  darkness,  or  is  it  a 
natural  state  of  mind?  Is  optimism  light  or  just 
pure  sentiment? 

I  wish  someone  from  the  heart  of  the  country 
where,  at  the  first  sign  of  darkness,  like  the  birds, 
a  man  goes  to  sleep  and  at  the  first  light  of  dawn 
turns  rest  fully  in  his  bed,  I  wish  such  a  man  would 
write  us  his  philosophy;  I  wish  he  would  tell  us 
whether  he  can  find  most  of  beauty  or  most  of 
ugliness  in  the  world. 

It  is  when  I  sit  by  Georgina's  bedside  through 
those  long  hours  before  morning,  listening,  only 
listening  to  the  fitfulness  of  her  breathing,  that  my 
thoughts  are  lame  and  trembling  in  despair.  Like 
Diana,  when  the  daylight  comes,  I  feel  most  cer- 
tain that  God  will  spare  her  to  me. 

This  morning  early,  she  woke  out  of  a  state,  half 
unconsciousness,  half  sleep. 

"Is  that  you?"  she  whispered. 

I  took  her  hand. 

"What  time  is  it?" 

I  told  her. 

"Why  aren't  there  any  birds  singing?" 

"There  are,"  said  I. 

"Then  why  don't  I  hear  them?" 
107 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  told  her  it  was  because  the  window  was  shut 
and  then  she  begged  me  to  open  it. 

"Just  for  one  moment,"  she  pleaded.  "One 
moment  couldn't  do  any  harm." 

I  gratified  her  wish.  How  could  I  refuse?  For 
that  moment  the  songs  of  all  the  birds  in  the 
garden  trembled  in  the  darkened  room.  I  walked 
to  the  bedside  to  ask  her  if  she  heard  them  then. 
Her  head  was  turned  from  me  on  the  pillow  and 
I  saw  a  big  tear  rolling  down  her  cheek. 

"Are  you  unhappy?"  I  whispered. 

"Oh — my  dear,"  said  she. 


JUNE  10 


T  seven  o'clock  this  morning,  Georgina 
died.  I  cannot  write  anything.  About 
an  hour  before,  we  knew  it  must  be  the 
end. 

Almost  until  the  last  she  was  uncon- 
scious. Then  a  minute  before  she  died, 
she  stirred.  Her  eyes  opened  and 
rested  first  on  Diana's  face  and  then  on 

mine. 

i 

I  saw  her  lips  moving  as  she  tried  to  speak. 
Quickly  I  leant  across  the  bed  to  hear  what  she  had 
to  say. 

"Open  the  window,  my  dear,"  she  breathed. 

I  obeyed  at  once  and  when  I  turned  back  to 
the  bedside,  she  had  gone.  The  look  of  gratitude 
was  still  there  in  her  face.  For  one  instant  she 
had  heard  the  birds  at  their  singing.  I  am  glad 
she  heard  them  once  more  before  she  died. 


APRIL  8 


HAD  thought  I  should  never  open  this 
note-book  again.  Something  in  the 
spirit  of  it  and  its  making  seemed 
so  closely  connected  with  Georgina 
when  she  was  alive  that  with  her 
death,  I  felt  it  to  be  a  closed  book. 

When  they  lowered  the  coffin  into 
the  grave  and  as  one  by  one  the  shovelfuls  of  earth 
were  heaped  upon  it,  I  said  to  myself  that  there  my 
life  had  ended  also.  Something  of  me  was  buried, 
too,  that  day.  If  I  were  master  of  my  pen  I  might 
attempt  to  explain  it.  Doubtless  when  greatly  you 
receive,  you  greatly  give ;  and  from  Georgina  I  had 
received  so  much.  Women  are  no  less  wonderful 
because  a  man  does  not  understand  them.  I  have 
never  understood  them  at  all,  perhaps  because  they 
know  so  little  about  themselves.  But  Georgina  had 
been  very  wonderful  to  me.  So  much  had  she 
made  herself  one  with  the  interests  of  my  life, 
that  at  times  I  would  feel  as  if  in  her,  I  were  look- 
ing on  at  myself ;  could  almost  criticise  my  actions, 
passing  judgment  upon  them  from  those  very 
things  she  did  herself. 

"5 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

"My  dear,"  she  has  sometimes  said  to  me,  "I 
have  done  such  and  such  a  thing." 

"How  did  you  do  it?"  I  would  ask  and,  in  her 
answer,  see  myself  as  clearly  as  if  it  had  been  a 
mirror  to  my  mind. 

"There  you  are,  my  friend,"  I  have  often  said 
to  myself;  "that  is  you,  whether  you  like  it  or  not — 
now  what  do  you  think  of  yourself?" 

Over  the  matter  of  Hodgins,  the  gardener,  I 
learnt  a  thousand  times  how  small  and  petty  my 
prejudices  were.  When  she  did  not  give  way  to 
hers,  I  could  see  how  miserably  I  had  given  way 
to  mine  myself.  This  is  the  miracle  which  love 
can  make  between  a  man  and  a  woman.  God  is 
Love — it  were  the  same  to  say  that  God  is  Under- 
standing. We  often  knew,  each  of  us,  what  the 
other  was  going  to  say.  I  know  she  read  my 
thoughts  as  easily  as  I  could  think  them.  Some 
little  weakness — and  how  many  we  all  of  us  have — 
and  I  would  see  her  eyes  turn  away  rather  than 
look  at  me,  rather  than  let  me  know  she  had  seen. 
A  thousand  times  I  have  not  recognised  it  was  a 
weakness  until  the  moment  when  I  saw  the  turning 
of  her  head. 

There,  you  see,  I  have  tried;  you  see  also  how 
116 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

completely  I  have  failed.  I  cannot  explain  what 
it  was  that  was  taken  from  me  on  the  day  that 
Georgina  died,  but  something  of  me  was  laid  at 
rest  when  they  threw  those  spadefuls  of  earth  into 
her  grave. 

Now  all  that  remains  of  me,  I  see  in  Diana's 
eyes.  Slowly  through  these  long  days  of  winter 
we  have  just  left  behind,  she  has  begun  to  be  my 
mirror,  too.  I  am  finding  again  my  little  weak- 
nesses as  a  father  where  before  I  found  my  weak- 
nesses as  a  man.  Diana  is  almost  nineteen  now 
and  already,  I  know,  she  feels  I  am  merely  a  child. 

Only  the  other  morning  she  reproved  me  for  the 
untidiness  of  my  study. 

"I  use  it  more  than  I  did,"  I  explained  in  my 
defence.  "Your  mother  used  to  keep  it  tidy  be- 
fore; but  then  she  occupied  it  more  than  I  did." 

"Is  that  a  good  excuse,  Daddy?"  said  she. 

I  sat  down  in  the  chair  in  which  Georgina  was 
wont  to  sit  and  then  Diana  put  her  arms  round 
my  neck  and  kissed  me.  I  felt  she  was  calling  me 
a  child  then  and  indeed  I  am  sure  she  is  older  and 
wiser  than  I.  She  tells  me  things  about  people 
in  the  parish  which  I  am  certain  are  quite  true  and 
would  never  have  come  to  me  of  my  own  accord. 

117 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  suppose  it  is  that  as  we  grow  older  we  live 
the  more  in  the  past.  Our  judgments  are  of  the 
past;  our  wisdom  an  accumulation  of  experience. 


"She  reproved  me  for  the  untidiness 
of  my  study." 

The  new  generation  is  always  looking   forward; 
their  eyes  are  forever  staring  outward  and  onward. 
We  only  look  within.    They  are  wiser  in  the  present 
than  we,  for  we  have  the  wisdom  as  of  little  chil- 
dren, the  sum  of  whose  expression  is  in  the  past. 
Surely  it  is  only  speech  and  expression  that  a 
118 


baby  needs  to  make  it  tell  the  wonders  of  the  ages 
through  which  it  has  come.  A  man  grows  from 
infancy  to  youth  and  all  his  wisdom  conies  from 
that  which  lies  before  him.  He  nears  old  age  and 
wisdom  is  for  him  in  that  which  lies  behind.  Then 
he  is  a  child  once  more  with  speech  at  will  to  give 
expression  to  the  generation  he  has  passed. 

Without  doubt  it  is  the  child  who  is  the  wisest 
of  us  all,  next  the  youth  and  last  of  all  the  man 
of  years,  the  man  who  has  lost  his  sight  of  the 
ages  which  have  gone,  is  blind  to  all  the  ages  yet 
to  come  and  has  but  the  little  span  of  his  three 
score  years  and  ten  from  which  to  gather  wisdom. 

Yes — I  am  sure  of  it  now — Diana  is  wiser  than 
I.  Sometimes  I  see  her  grey  eyes  looking  out 
across  the  garden  to  the  wide  acres  of  cornfield 
just  beyond.  She  does  not  see,  as  I,  how  much 
better  the  hollyhocks  have  done  this  year  than  last ; 
she  does  not  compare,  as  I  compare,  the  coming 
harvest  with  the  wealth  of  last  year's  yield.  Her 
eyes  are  set  upon  a  great  futurity  which  mine  have 
grown  too  old  to  see.  And  one  of  these  days — if 
God  wills  it — when  her  eyes,  too,  are  growing  dim, 
she  will  have  put  forth  another  life  to  see  yet  fur- 
ther towards  the  great  beyond. 
9  119 


APRIL  p 


X 

HIS  month  has  opened  sadly  in  our  part 
of  the  world.  The  grey  days  have  fol- 
lowed each  other  in  procession.  Scarcely 
one  has  gone  by  without  the  low  clouds 
breaking  in  some  shower  of  rain.  The 
first  swallow  which,  in  an  hour  of  sun- 
shine, I  saw  the  day  before  yesterday, 
has  found  a  shelter  somewhere  and  will 
not  venture  out.  I  wonder  where  he  has 
gone.  He  must  regret  the  blue  skies  of 
Africa  he  has  left  behind. 
Until  a  few  days  ago  the  catkins  on  the  nut  trees 
were  still  hanging  to  the  branches.  Diana  said 
they  looked  like  tassels  on  a  mid-Victorian  anti- 
macassar. It  will  be  Diana's  grandchildren  who 
will  speak  of  the  mid-Victorian  era  with  respect. 
There  is  no  romance  in  it  to  her.  Georgina  and 
I  both  liked  anti-macassars.  We  used  to  have 
them  on  all  the  chairs  in  the  drawing-room.  Then 
one  day  Diana  came  back  for  her  holidays  from 
school  and  told  us  they  would  never  do.  I  re- 
member the  day  when  Georgina  packed  them  all 

123 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

away  into  an  old  chest  on  the  landing.     They  are 
there  still. 

But  Diana  was  quite  right.    A  few  weeks  later, 


"Mrs.  Smith — the  wealthiest  of 
our  parishioners." 

Mrs.    Smith — the  wealthiest  of  our  parishioners, 
who  is  generous,  too — came  to  pay  a  call. 

"I'm  glad,"  said  she,  "to  see  you've  got  rid  of 
your    anti-macassars.      They    give    such    an    old- 

124 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

fashioned  air  to  a  room.  I  hope  you  have  got  rid 
of  them,"  she  added.  "They  haven't  gone  to  the 
wash — have  they?" 

We  assured  her  they  were  no  more.  But  I  am 
certain  it  was  just  that  old-fashioned  air  which 
Georgina  loved.  It  was  not  old-fashioned  really 
to  us.  To  Diana  it  was  not  old-fashioned  enough. 
Anyhow  her  simile  was  quite  good.  The  catkins 
did  look  just  like  tassels.  It  was  the  tone  of  voice 
in  which  she  said  it. 

But  the  Spring  this  year  is  very  backward.  The 
last  year's  blossom  of  clematis  is  even  now  still 
clinging  to  the  hedges.  It  has  grown  grey  and 
dusty  and  spiders'  webs  are  all  spun  across  the 
flowers.  It  reminded  me  in  some  way  when  I  saw 
it  of  Miss  Haversham's  wedding  breakfast  that 
had  waited  and  waited  and  waited  in  vain. 

I  cannot  forget  that  swallow  which  I  saw  three 
days  ago.  If  I  had  it  in  my  power  I  would  give 
such  a  welcome  of  sunshine  to  these  intrepid  little 
birds,  that  face  the  dangers  of  their  thousand  miles 
to  reach  once  more  the  home  they  left  last  year. 

The  idea  of  that  swallow,  driven  into  hiding, 
compelled  to  shelter  from  the  cheerless  skies  directly 
it  arrived,  has  grown  so  much  in  my  mind  that  at 

125 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

morning  service  today  I  read  the  prayer  for  fair 
weather.  I  was  sure  the  farmers  would  welcome  it, 
and  one  day  of  sunshine  would  mean  a  lot  to  the 
swallow  that  has  come  so  many  miles  to  its  old 
nesting  place  beneath  my  eaves. 

And  so  I  read  the  prayer  that  God  would  send 
us  such  weather  as  that  we  might  receive  the  fruits 
of  the  earth  in  due  season,  wondering  as  I  read  it, 
whether  the  thoughts  which  were  in  my  mind 
could  justify  the  use  of  such  words  as  those. 

After  service,  while  I  was  changing  my  surplice 
in  the  vestry,  I  heard  the  voice  of  Mr.  Bumstead, 
our  market  gardener,  as  he  was  on  his  way  home 
from  church  through  the  graveyard. 

"Blame  parson !"  said  he.  "What's  'e  want  to  go 
prayin'  for  fine  weather  when  those  fields  of  mine 
be  fair  dried  wi'  all  the  gravel  underneath  'em. 
I  never  said  Amen  to  anythin'  he  asked  for,  but  I 
just  whips  out  my  prayer-book  and  while  he  was 
readin'  the  prayer  for  fine  weather,  danged  if  I 
didn't  read  the  prayer  for  rain.  An'  what's  more, 
I  got  it  finished  and  had  my  Amen  out  afore 
his'n." 

I  told  Diana  about  this  at  dinner.  I  told  it  her 
in  all  seriousness  because  it  seemed  perhaps  to  me 

126 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

that  in  the  selfishness  of  my  thoughts  I  had  not 
been  guided  to  the  right. 

She  looked  at  me  for  a  moment  and  then,  with 
a  twinkle  in  her  eye,  she  leant  across  the  table  and 
held  my  hand  as  I  was  helping  myself  to  salt. 

"Say  a  prayer  for  local  showers,  Daddy,"  said 
she. 

Now  can  there  be  any  doubt  about  it?  Diana  is 
wiser  than  I. 


APRIL  ii 


ODAY  there  were  newcomers  to 
Bramlingham.  The  Orchard 
Farm  next  to  us  has  been  sold 
and  this  morning  the  new  ar- 
rivals took  possession.  They 
are  named  Tregenna  and  must 
be  of  the  west  country — Cornish 
most  probably.  There  is  a 
father  and  mother,  a  son  and 
daughter.  The  daughter  is 
pretty,  but  not  well  dressed.  The  son  is  to  farm 
the  two  hundred  acres  in  training  for  greater  ven- 
tures in  California,  where  his  uncle  has  large  prop- 
erty. The  mother  is  dowdy  and  wears  black.  I 
have  heard  nothing  of  the  father.  My  informant 
in  all  these  matters  is  Diana.  She  has  been  in  the 
garden  most  of  the  morning  and  our  wall,  facing 
the  south,  overlooks  a  portion  of  the  garden  of 
the  Orchard  Farm. 

Feeling  afraid  that  she  might  have  been  inquisi- 
tive, I  asked  her  how  she  had  learnt  all  these  things 
so  soon. 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"I  was  pruning  the  ramblers,  Daddy,"  said  she, 
"on  the  south  wall.  I  saw  them  in  their  garden." 

"But  the  ramblers  should  have  been  pruned  last 
month,"  said  I. 

"They  were,"  she  replied.  "I  was  only  pretend- 
ing— they  didn't  know.  I  kept  getting  down  and 
moving  the  ladder.  Their  furniture's  all  modern. 
It  must  look  awful  in  that  lovely  old  house.  I 
don't  like  people  without  taste;  it's  as  necessary  as 
good  manners.  Little  Miss  Chester  down  in  the 
village  with  her  old  china  and  those  Chippendale 
things  she  has  makes  up  for  all  her  abrupt- 
ness. She's  really  nice  at  heart — that's  what 
you  are  if  you  have  good  taste.  People  with 
good  manners  and  bad  taste  are  only  super- 
ficially nice.  One  day  you'll  find  out  they're  horrid 
at  heart." 

I  am  sure  I  don't  know  where  Diana  has  learnt 
all  this.  She  evidently  has  made  up  her  mind  to 
disapprove  of  the  Tregennas. 

Now  I  am  wondering  if  there  is  any  truth  in 
what  she  says.  Has  taste  really  become  as  essential 
as  good  manners?  When  first  Georgina  and  I 
were  married,  I  am  afraid  we  thought  more  of  the 
comfort  of  our  little  house;  comfort  that  was  not 

132 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

luxury,  but  certainly  comfort  that  was  ease.  It 
was  only  after  Diana  had  been  to  school  in  the 
south  that  we  first  heard  any  mention  of  this  word 
taste. 

In  this,  I  have  no  doubt,  Diana  and  her  genera- 
tion will  find  that  they  are  wrong.  Mrs.  Tregenna 
for  all  her  dowdiness  will  prove  to  be  a  generous 
and  good-hearted  soul;  the  modern  furniture,  too, 
will  be  comfortable  and  homely  enough  when 
Diana  discovers  a  friendship  with  the  pretty  but 
ill-dressed  daughter. 

In  the  high  trees  beyond  the  spinney,  while  I 
was  out  for  my  walk  this  morning,  I  heard  the 
hay-bird  for  the  first  time  this  year.  In  the  text- 
books they  call  it  the  willow-warbler,  but  the  popular 
name  of  hay-bird  seems  far  more  suitable  to  me. 
In  the  first  place  I  have  never  seen  this  little  creature 
in  a  willow  tree  in  my  life.  His  hunting  ground 
for  those  insects  which  make  his  daily  food  is  in 
the  trees  that  border  on  the  edge  of  the  meadows 
and  cornfields  and  then  again  his  nest  is  built  of 
hay. 

When  therefore  Diana,  who  had  accompanied 
me,  stopped,  listening  to  his  song,  and  asked  me 
what  bird  it  was,  I  told  her  it  was  the  hay-bird. 

133 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Listen  carefully,"  said  I.    "He  always  sings  the 
same  twenty  or  thirty  notes  over  and  over  again, 


/ 

"Diana  stopped,  listening  to  his  song." 


but  you  never  get  tired  of  hearing  them.     There 
is  a  new  freshness  to  them  every  time." 

We  could  see  him  high  above  us,  flying  from  one 
branch  to  another,  the  olive-green  of.  his  plumage 

134 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

making  it  somewhat  difficult  for  us  sometimes  to 
distinguish  him  amongst  the  leaves. 

"It  sounds,"  said  Diana  presently,  "it  sounds  just 
as  if  he  were  going  to  begin  a  story,  a  once-upon-a- 
time  story,  and  then  when  he  gets  as  far  as  telling 
where  the  princess  lives,  he  stops." 

No  one  could  have  described  the  song  of  the 
hay-bird  better  than  that.  I  looked  at  her  and 
smiled  at  the  fertility  of  her  imagination. 

"Don't  you  like  his  song  then?"  I  asked. 

"Love  it,"  said  she.     "I  think  it's  sweet." 

"But  doesn't  it  annoy  you  when  he  stops?" 

"No." 

"It  must  be  his  manner  then,"  said  I.  "He  has 
the  bad  taste  not  to  finish  his  story,  but  he  does  it 
with  such  good  manners  that  you  like  him  in  spite 
of  it  all." 

She  twisted  me  round  and  made  me  look  her  in 
the  face. 

"Daddy,"  said  she,  "I'm  not  going  to  like  the 
Tregennas." 


10 


APRIL  17 


HIS  was  Georgina's  birthday. 
Had  she  lived,  she  would  have 
been  fifty-one  today.  After 
breakfast  this  morning  I  went 
up  to  the  bedroom  where  she 
died.  We  keep  the  room  locked 
up.  No  one  has  used  it  since 
her  death.  Turning  the  key  as 
quietly  as  I  could,  for  I  did  not 
wish  Diana  to  know  that  I  was 
there,  I  entered  and  closed  the 
door  after  me. 

Nothing  had  been  said  at 
breakfast  with  reference  to  what  day  it  was.  I  al- 
most hoped  that  perhaps  Diana  had  forgotten.  It 
would  not  exactly  be  like  her  to  do  so.  There  is  a 
very  gentle  side  of  her  nature  which  does  not  admit 
of  forgetfulness  in  such  things  as  this.  But  this 
gentleness  is  only  to  be  seen  occasionally.  In 
general  you  would  confess  her  worthy  of  her  name. 
There  is  all  the  element  of  adventure  in  her  soul. 

This  morning,  however,  I  noticed  that  gentle- 
ness and  thought  how  like  Georgina  she  had  grown. 

139 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

She  had  seen  to  it  that  we  had  a  fish-pie  for  break- 
fast and  this  is  a  dish  I  like  as  well  as  any.  There 
were  hot  rolls,  too,  and  when  she  handed  me  my 
tea  she  smiled  and  said,  "God  bless  you." 

Yet  nothing  was  said  of  Georgina's  birthday.     I 
made  sure  she  had  forgotten  it  and  once,  as  I  looked 


at  the  chair  my  wife  was  wont  to  occupy  at  meals, 
I  turned  away  quickly  with  the  feeling  that  Diana's 
eyes  were  watching  me.  This  was  not  so ;  in  fact 
her  eyes,  completely  in  the  opposite  direction,  were 
gazing  far  across  the  broad  fields  of  the  Orchard 
Farm. 

So  I   felt  confident  that  I  would  not  be  dis- 
140 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

turbed  and,  having  listened  for  a  moment  at  the 
door  to  make  certain  that  she  was  downstairs,  I 
went  across  to  the  window,  drew  aside  the  cur- 
tains and  raised  it  as  high  as  it  would  go. 

With  the  sound  of  all  the  birds  in  the  garden, 
with  the  song  of  a  lark  lifted  high  above  the 
meadows,  sprinkling  its  music  which  fell  like 
tinkling  bells  into  the  silence  of  the  room,  it  was 
indeed  as  if  with  the  opening  of  that  window  I 
had  let  the  spirit  of  Georgina  come  back,  just  as  on 
that  day  in  summer  of  last  year  I  had  opened  the 
window  to  let  it  speed  away  to  God. 

It  must  have  been  an  hour  I  sat  there,  thinking 
most  times  of  her,  of  our  days  together  in  Bram- 
lingham,  our  years  together  at  St.  Margaret's  in  the 
East  End.  Sometimes  the  voice  of  a  chiff-chaff 
trilling  his  two  unvaried  notes,  sometimes  the 
song  of  a  white-throat  in  the  garden  would  distract 
my  mind.  I  have  loved  these  birds  from  child- 
hood, longer  even  than  I  have  loved  Georgina,  but 
what  I  wrote  of  them  in  this  note-book  last  year, 
I  would  still  maintain  to  be  true.  I  should  miss  the 
song  of  the  blackcap  were  he  never  to  return  to  our 
garden,  but  in  time  the  prolongation  of  his  absence 
would  diminish  my  regret.  This  will  never  be  so 

141 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

with  the  absence  of  Georgina.  My  heart  grows 
fonder  of  her  as  the  days  go  by  and  there  is  no 
certain  promise  of  her  return. 

Yet  perhaps  this  is  because  there  are  times,  and 
often,  when  it  seems  to  me  she  has  never  really 
gone  at  all.  A  feeling  of  her  presence  still  remains. 
I  think  that  that  is  why  I  close  this  room,  to  foster 
some  half-formed  belief  that  she  is  with  us  now. 
As  I  entered  the  room  this  morning  and  saw  the 
bed  on  which  she  had  died,  it  came  back  swiftly 
to  my  mind  that  she  was  dead,  but  when  I  opened 
the  window  to  the  world  outside  and  let  the  singing 
of  the  birds  and  all  the  air  of  Spring  come  in  once 
more,  she  came  to  life  again.  That  hour  it  seemed 
I  sat  and  talked  with  her. 

And  then  at  last  the  door  opened  and  she  was 
gone  again.  I  turned  round.  It  was  Diana.  She 
came  across  the  room  at  once  and  knelt  beside  my 
chair. 

"Daddy,"  she  said,  "you're  only  making  yourself 
unhappy." 

I  shook  my  head,  but  she  would  have  it  so. 

"You're  only  allowing  yourself  to  remember 
things,"  she  went  on.  "Don't!  I  knew  you  would 
because  today  was  Mother's  birthday." 

142 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

So  she  had  remembered.  Perhaps  she  was  look- 
ing at  me  after  all. 

Then  she  put  both  hands  on  my  shoulders  and, 
as  is  her  habit  when  she  needs  my  full  attention, 
turned  me  round  to  face  her  eyes. 

"Aren't  I  any  good?"  she  asked.  "Don't  I  help 
at  all?  Tell  me  if  there's  anything  in  which  I'm 
lacking  and  I'll  try  to  make  it  good." 

"Just  be  yourself,  my  dear,"  said  I.  That  was 
the  first  time  I  had  called  her  so.  "I  wouldn't  have 
you  changed  for  the  ransom  of  a  king.  I'm  not 
unhappy  so  long  as  I've  got  you." 

"Very  well  then,  Daddy, — listen,"  said  she.  "I 
promise  you  that  I'll  never  leave  you — no— you're 

not  to  say  a  word "  and  she  put  her  hand  across 

my  mouth  and  I  remember  now  it  was  verbena  I 
smelt;  she  had  been  picking  it — "I'm  never  going 
to  leave  you — never!" 

And  I  have  written  this  in  my  note-book  so  that 
it  may  remind  me  in  her  wildest  moments  how 
gentle  Diana  can  be. 


APRIL  18 


unfortunate  incident  has  occurred, 
one  which  I  fear  will  embarrass  the 
relationship  with  our  next-door  neigh- 
bours. If  we  had  already  called  and 
shown  the  friendliness  of  our  disposi- 
tion, which  I  certainly  feel,  it  would 
not  have  been  so  difficult.  But  inten- 
tionally I  have  deferred  our  first  visit 
until  such  time  as  I  thought  they  would 
be  comfortably  settled.  Now  this  un- 
fortunate affair  has  happened  to  strain  the  making 
of  friendly  relations  and,  instead  of  calling  as  a 
visitor,  my  first  intentions  must  be  those  of  a  peace- 
maker. 

It  appears  they  have  employed  a  boy  to  frighten 
away  the  birds  in  the  cherry  orchard  by  tapping  on 
the  back  of  an  old  tea-tray.  He  sits  on  the  ground 
beneath  one  of  the  trees  in  the  middle  of  the  orchard 
and,  with  the  tray  between  his  legs,  pursues  the 
monotonous  beating  of  his  drum  from  early  morn- 
ing until  the  evening  comes  when  no  bird  will  search 
for  food. 

It  annoyed  me  a  little  at  first,  the  sound  was  so 

147 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

persistent  and  so  unvaried.  But  after  a  time,  I 
think  both  Diana  and  I  began  to  like  it.  There  was 
something  primitive  in  the  sight  of  that  boy,  seated 
beneath  the  cherry  trees  over-burdened  with  the 
weight  of  their  snow,  rattling  this  barbaric  tune  on 
his  old  kettledrum.  We  both  agreed  that  it  was  the 
most  humane  method  of  keeping  the  birds  away. 

I  think  Diana  was  even  favourably  impressed 
with  the  Tregennas  on  this  account,  but  the  im- 
pression did  not  last  for  long.  This  morning,  as  I 
was  in  the  garden,  I  heard  the  sound  of  voices  in 
heated  altercation.  At  that  distance  I  could  not 
distinguish  what  was  being  said,  but  I  made  sure 
at  least  that  one  voice  was  Diana's.  Accordingly 
I  walked  down  the  little  lane  between  the  nut- 
hedges  and  looked  over  the  five-barred  gate  that 
gave  entrance  to  the  cherry  orchard. 

By  then  the  voices  had  ceased,  and,  as  I  came 
within  sight,  I  saw  the  young  Mr.  Tregenna  raising 
his  hat  as  he  walked  away  from  Diana  who  was 
standing  by  the  boy  who  beats  the  tea-tray  under  the 
trees.  He  was  holding  the  tray  in  one  hand  and, 
with  the  knuckles  of  the  other,  was  rubbing  first 
one  eye  and  then  the  next. 

I  called  to  Diana.  She  came  across  to  the  gate 
148 


77t<? 


Bullfinch 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

carrying  a  dead  bullfinch  in  the  palm  of  her  open 
hand.  I  half  guessed  what  had  happened.  These 
little  birds  rapaciously  devour  the  blossom  of  the 
cherry  trees  in  Spring.  So  far  from  being  un- 
common in  this  country,  they  are  to  be  found  in  all 
fruit  districts  in  great  numbers.  With  their  strong 
beaks  they  nip  off  the  flower  buds  and  will  destroy 
a  whole  crop  in  embryo  if  left  unmolested.  This 
makes  cause  enough  against  them  for  the  farmer, 
but  I  knew  well  enough  the  feelings  of  Diana  at 
the  sight  of  that  little  creature  in  its  glorious  red, 
grey  and  purple-black  plumage.  She  cannot  bear  to 
see  any  animal  dead.  I  remember  the  tears  coming 
thickly  into  her  eyes  when  she  saw  a  swallow  that 
had  beaten  itself  to  death  against  a  window  pane 
in  the  gardening  shed. 

"What  has  happened?"  I  asked  as  she  came  up. 

It  appeared  to  be  much  as  I  had  expected.  The 
boy  had  brought  a  catapult  with  him,  concealed  in 
his  pocket.  To  vary  the  monotony  of  beating  on 
his  tray,  he  had  taken  shots  at  the  birds  which  came 
within  reach  of  his  aim.  By  some  mischance  this 
bullfinch  had  been  hit  and  had  fallen  wounded  to 
the  ground. 

When  Diana  found  him,  it  was  lying  on  the  grass 
11  151 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

by  his  side  still  alive.  I  can  imagine  the  torrent 
of  her  anger  at  such  a  sight  as  that.  Without  the 
slightest  hesitation  she  set  to  and  gave  that  boy 


"To  vary  the  monotony    .    .    .    he 
had  taken  shots  at  the  birds" 

as  many  sound  blows  across  the  head  as  I  have  no 
doubt  he  will  remember  for  a  few  weeks;  and 
was  thus  engaged  when  young  Mr.  Tregenna 
came  up. 

152 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"You  must  excuse  my  interruption,"  said  he,  "but 
may  I  ask  what  you're  doing?" 

"I'm  giving  this  boy  a  beating,"  said  Diana,  "for 
shooting  that  bullfinch." 

"Then  possibly  you  don't  know,"  replied  Mr. 
Tregenna — and  I  am  sure  it  must  have  been  his 
quietness  of  voice  which  irritated  Diana  the  more, 
"but  this  boy  is  employed  by  me  to  keep  away 
the  birds  from  the  cherry  blossom.  He's  only 
doing  the  duty  he's  paid  for.  Of  course  he's  not 
expected  to  kill  the  birds,  but  personally  I  quite 
approve  of  his  having  killed  a  bullfinch — a  dozen 
of  those  little  beggars  would  strip  this  orchard 
bare." 

"But  he  hasn't  killed  it!"  explained  Diana. 
"That's  the  brutality  of  it !  It's  quivering  still  and 
if  you  had  any  feeling  for  animals  at  all,  you'd  kill 
it  at  once." 

I  suppose  he  must  have  smiled  at  the  intensity 
of  her  feelings,  for  here,  as  she  recounted  it  to  me, 
Diana  became  almost  incoherent  with  anger  at  the 
remembrance  of  it  all. 

"Did  he  kill  it?"  I  asked. 

"Yes— after  I'd  said  that  if  he  didn't  do  it  I 
should  have  to  do  it  myself.  I  told  him,  too,  that 

'S3 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

he  ought  to  get  rid  of  the  boy  at  once;  that  if  I 
had  anybody  in  my  service  who  was  cruel  to  animals 
I  should  dismiss  them  at  a  moment's  notice." 

"But  you  had  no  right  to  tell  him  what  he  ought 
to  do,  Diana." 

"I  can't  help  that!"  she  exclaimed.  "I'd  dismiss 
the  little  brute  at  once.  I  hope  I  hurt  him." 

It  was  no  good  trying  then  to  persuade  her  to  a 
more  charitable  frame  of  mind.  In  fact  I  must 
admit  that  when  I  saw  the  dead  bullfinch  lying  in 
her  hand,  I  felt  greatly  in  sympathy  with  all  she 
had  said.  Georgina  would  have  done  just  the  same. 
And  for  myself,  I  would  never  kill  a  bird.  They 
have  plenty  of  dangers  to  threaten  them  without  the 
hand  of  man.  There  are  the  long  cold  days  of 
winter  when  all  their  food  is  covered  by  the  snow. 
A  man,  it  seems,  only  notices  the  habits  of  birds 
when  they  affect  his  crops.  He  never  thinks 
of  the  inestimable  service  they  are  to  him  when 
the  ground  is  barren  and  the  harvest  has  been 
gathered  in. 

I  said  nothing,  therefore,  but  took  her  arm  and 
we  walked  back  to  the  house.  Just  as  we  reached 
the  summer  house,  she  stopped  and  her  fingers 
tightened  on  my  hand  as  she  listened.  The  boy  had 

154 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

begun  beating  on  his  tea-tray  once  more.     I  saw 
a  look  in  her  face. 

"I  shall  bury  the  bullfinch  in  the  garden,"  said 
she,  "and  put  up  a  little  gravestone  to  remember 
it  by." 


APRIL  21 


'FTER  this  incident  in  the  cherry  orchard 
I   thought   it   best   to    call   upon   the 
Tregennas  as  soon  as  possible  and  this 
morning  told  Diana  that  I  thought  we 
had  better  go.     She  said  nothing. 
"You'll  come — won't  you?"  said  I. 
"I  can't,"  she  replied.     "I'm  going 
into  the  village  to  see  Miss  Chester, 
She's  in  bed  with  a  cold." 

There  was  time  no  doubt  for  her  to 
have  performed  both  duties,  but  having  seen  this 
very  morning  a  small  wooden  cross  under  one  of 
the  apple  trees  in  the  kitchen  garden  and  guessing 
the  memory  of  that  to  which  it  was  raised,  I  did 
not  press  her  to  accompany  me.  At  half  past  four 
then  I  went  alone. 

The  low-ceilinged  drawing-room  of  the  old 
orchard  farmhouse  certainly  does  not  look  well  with 
modern  furniture.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  Diana 
and  her  generation  are  quite  right,  good  taste  is  a 
pleasant  characteristic.  I  think,  perhaps,  the  father 
and  the  mother  are  responsible  for  the  modernity 
of  the  furniture.  He  has  been  a  brewer,  now  re- 

159 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

tired  and  devoted  to  the  future  interests  of  his  son. 
But  he  has  ideas  of  his  own,  and  those  ideas  he 
evidently  insists  on  seeing  carried  out.  Mrs. 
Tregenna  is  silent  and  obedient  to  all  his  wishes. 
They  are  both  most  estimable  people. 

We  sat  over  tea  and  talked.  Mr.  Tregenna  told 
me  how  his  son  was  managing  the  farm  for  three 
years  in  preparation  for  his  greater  venture  the 
other  side  of  the  world.  In  three  years'  time  he 
was  to  set  off  for  California  and  then  they  would 
let  the  land,  remaining  in  the  farmhouse  them- 
selves and  retaining  such  acres  of  land  as  was  re- 
quired for  their  own  needs. 

Young  Mr.  Tregenna  has  been  through  one  of 
the  agricultural  colleges.  This  is  his  first  attempt 
at  the  actual  management  of  a  farm. 

I  gathered  all  this  throughout  the  conversation 
during  which  nothing  was  mentioned  of  his  en- 
counter with  Diana. 

It  was  just  as  I  had  risen  to  my  feet,  saying  that 
I  must  go,  that  the  door  of  the  drawing-room  opened 
and  he  entered.  His  face  is  open  and  honest.  I 
liked  the  grip  of  his  hand. 

"Must  you  go  now?"  said  he. 

I  said  I  had  been  there  for  full  an  hour. 
1 60 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Well— I'll  walk  to  the  gate  with  you,"  said  he, 
and  in  the  definite  tone  of  his  voice  I  felt  that  his 
intention  was  other  than  mere  politeness.  He  had 
something  to  say  to  me  and  it  needed  no  very 
shrewd  guess  of  mine  to  imagine  what  it  was. 

For  the  first  few  steps  we  walked  in  silence  and 
then  he  came  out  with  it. 

"I  hope  your  daughter  didn't  think  me  rude," 
said  he,  "over  that  little  affair  of  the  bullfinch.  To 
tell  you  the  truth,  until  I  saw  you  at  the  gate,  I 
didn't  realise  who  she  was." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  I  at  once.  "She  didn't  think  you 
rude." 

"But  she  thought  me  cruel." 

I  smiled.  He  would  have  it  that  she  thought  him 
something.  So  then  I  explained  how  fond  we  both 
are  of  birds. 

"Not  too  fond,"  I  added,  "but  perhaps  a  little 
foolishly  so.  Bullfinches  are  great  pets  of  ours." 

"You  haven't  a  cherry  orchard,"  said  he. 

"No,"  said  I,  "but  we  make  red  and  black  currant 
jam  every  year  from  the  fruit  out  of  our  garden." 

"Then  how  do  you  manage?"  he  asked. 

I  told  him  how  I  tied  straw  ropes  round  the  goose- 
berry and  the  currant  bushes  to  alter  their  appear- 

161 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

ance,  at  the  same  time  having  strings  across  the 
garden  with  little  pieces  of  paper  attached  that 
twirled  around  with  the  breath  of  the  slightest  wind. 

"Then,"  I  added,  "I  put  some  peas  in  the  little 
lane  next  to  your  orchard.  I  find  they  are  sufficient 
attraction  for  the  bullfinches  and  serve  to  satisfy 
their  appetites  before  ever  they  get  into  the  garden. 
They  used  to  disbud  my  fruit  trees  terribly  until  I 
did  that." 

We  had  passed  the  gate  by  this  time  and  he  still 
walked  on  by  my  side  towards  the  vicarage. 

"I'm  afraid  a  farmer  can't  waste  time  over  such 
elaborate  precautions  as  those,"  he  said  presently, 
"but  your  daughter  was  quite  right  to  smack  the 
boy's  head  if  he  was  torturing  the  bird.  I  have 
no  actual  evidence  that  he  was  and  so  I  could 
scarcely  adopt  the  extreme  measure  she  suggested." 

"You  mean  of  dismissing  him?" 

"Yes." 

"Oh — you  mustn't  take  any  notice  of  that,"  I 
said  at  once.  "Diana's  very  impulsive.  She  didn't 
stop  to  think  what  she  was  saying." 

"Diana's  her  name,"  said  he. 

I  nodded  and  he  repeated  it.  He  probably  knew 
someone  so  called. 

162 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"And  now  I  suppose,"  he  went  on  with  a  smile, 
"she  thinks  me  the  villain  in  the  piece." 

"She'll  tell  you  that  she  doesn't  herself,"  said  I 
laughing.  "Here  she  comes  along  the  road  now," 
and  wishing  that  peace  should  be  made  with  our 
neighbours,  we  passed  by  the  vicarage  gate  to  meet 
her  as  she  returned  from  her  visit  to  Miss  Chester. 

I  could  not  help  smiling  as  I  saw  Diana's  cheeks 
grow  red  when  she  realised  the  inevitable  meeting. 

"Mr.  Tregenna  imagines,"  said  I,  "that  you  think 
him  a  villain  because  of  what  happened  the  other 
morning." 

"I  don't  think  I  have  thought  about  it  at  all," 
said  Diana,  and  there  came  a  look  into  her  face 
which  I  had  never  seen  before.  It  must  have  been 
because  that  was  not  quite  the  truth.  That  little 
cross  of  wood  under  the  apple  tree  was  proof  of  it. 
But  women  often  say  things  like  this.  I  have  never 
discovered  why,  yet  often  I  have  noticed  it. 

Still,  whether  it  were  the  truth  or  not,  it  had  a 
peculiar  effect  upon  the  young  man  beside  me.  He 
held  out  his  hand  to  me  and  saying  something  to 
the  effect  that  he  must  not  intrude  further  upon 
my  time,  he  raised  his  hat  to  Diana  and  set  back 
down  the  road. 

163 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"You  have  offended  him,  Diana,"  said  I. 

"Havel?"  she  replied. 

"And  it  was  not  quite  the  truth,"  I  added. 
"Surely  you  must  have  thought  about  it  when  you 
put  that  little  wooden  cross  under  the  apple  tree." 

"Well — I  sha'n't  think  about  it  any  more,"  said 
she. 

I  have  put  all  this  into  my  note-book,  because  it 
has  seemed  to  me  a  strange  example  of  how  women 
form  hasty  dislikes  and  for  such  slight  reasons.  I 
think  myself  that  he  is  a  nice,  honest  fellow.  But 
this  was  not  really  what  I  had  intended  to  write 
about.  I  wanted  to  record  the  fact  that  I  heard 
a  wren  this  morning  singing  as  brave  a  song  as  I 
have  ever  listened  to.  Looking  out  into  the  garden, 
I  saw  him  seated  on  a  low  branch  of  the  quickset 
hedge,  while  on  a  branch  near  by  his  mate  sat 
listening  enraptured. 

I  wish  it  were  always  Spring. 


APRIL  25 


HIS  morning  I  rose  early  and  went  for 
a  walk  into  the  woods.  Certain  things 
there  are,  which  are  characteristic  of 
certain  days,  which  strike  the  note  of 
the  seasons.  There  was  a  sharp  frost 
last  night.  When  I  set  out  the  ground 
was  white,  but  in  less  than  half  an  hour 
a  warm  sun  had  melted  it.  Only  the 
spiders'  webs,  spun  in  the  gaps  of  the 
hedges,  retained  the  white  spangling  of 
the  hoar.  If  I  had  been  asked  then 
what  were  the  characteristics  of  that  morning  at 
that  time  of  Spring,  I  should  have  said — the  tum- 
bling flight  of  the  peewit  and  the  smell  of  a  woods- 
man's fire. 

For  a  long  while  I  stood  at  the  edge  of  the  wood 
watching  these  birds  as  with  winnowing  wings  they 
circled  about  the  fields,  uttering  that  unmusical  cry 
which  has  given  them  the  name  of  peewit  by  which 
most  commonly  they  are  known.  Lapwing  is  the 
name  I  like  better,  for  it  seems  to  me  that  their 
peculiar  flight  is  more  characteristic  of  them  than 
their  cry;  and  plover,  which  is  the  more  generic 
12  167 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

term,  I  like  not  at  all.  The  delicacy  of  the  plover's 
egg,  demanding  as  it  does  that  nests  should  be  rifled 
year  after  year,  appeals  to  me  only  in  the  sense  of 
its  cruelty.  It  is  only  once  a  year  that  they  attempt 
to  raise  a  brood,  and  because  the  egg  is  a  delicacy 
makes  no  excuse  in  my  mind  for  its  destruction. 

I  remember  a  man  once  saying  to  me : 

"Cricket  may  be  an  excellent  game,  but  you  have 
to  be  a  first-class  player  to  enjoy  it.  If  my  side 
goes  in  first  and  I  make  a  duck,  the  rest  of  the 
day  is  spoilt  for  me  so  far  as  any  enjoyment  goes." 

Now  if  a  man  feels  that  for  one  day  about  a 
sport,  what  must  a  bird  feel  for  the  rest  of  the 
year  when  one  of  the  first  instincts  of  its  nature 
has  been  frustrated?  The  bird  doesn't  feel,  is  the 
answer  of  the  man  as  he  dips  his  plover's  egg  in 
celery  salt  and  carries  it  to  his  mouth. 

But  this  is  a  theory  I  most  vigorously  would 
deny.  If  you  can  prove  that  a  bird,  or  any  animal, 
has  feelings  at  all,  you  must  admit  that  in  elemental 
matters  where  the  first  instincts  of  its  nature  are 
concerned,  those  feelings  will  most  be  seen.  Now 
it  is  not  good  enough  to  say  that  a  bird  has  feelings 
of  hunger.  These  may  be  merely  physical,  convey- 
ing no  impression  to  the  brain.  But  you  must  con- 

168 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

fess  that  a  bird  has  feelings  of  fear.  It  can  be 
frightened,  and  fright  is  less  connected  with  the 
body  than  the  mind.  So,  if  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  which  I  am  prepared  to  admit  is 
the  strongest  with  which  Nature  has  provided  her 
creatures,  gives  rise  to  feelings  of  fear  in  the  mind, 
then  must  not  the  instinct  of  reproduction  which 
is  nearly  as  great,  be  accountable  for  feelings  almost 
as  strong  as  fear.  But  a  bird  will  even  conquer 
fear  for  the  preservation  of  its  young.  Larks  and 
thrushes  are  well  known  in  this  respect  and  so  I 
argue  that  it  must  be  a  higher  mental  activity  which 
rises  to  such  an  effort,  and  as  such  should  be  re- 
spected. 

This  is  no  sentimental  notion  in  my  mind,  but 
a  decision  arrived  at  by  logical  processes  alone. 
Therefore,  believing  that  birds  do  feel  and  suffer  at 
the  deprivation  of  their  young,  how  could  I  with 
complacency  eat  a  plover's  egg?  How  could  any- 
one if  they  believed  the  same  as  I?  The  luxury  of 
food  is  the  last  necessity  for  which  a  man  should 
seek.  Yet  luxury,  now-a-days,  for  many  is  the  only 
necessity  they  know. 

One  of  these  days,  perhaps,  it  will  occur  to  the 
King  to  refuse  the  first  plover's  egg  that  the  spring- 

169 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

time  brings  him  and  then  the  fancied  delicacy  which 
it  is  not  longer  the  fashion  to  enjoy  will  become  a 
tasteless  thing.  The  gentleman  who  is  so  expert 
at  argument  will  cork  up  the  bottle  of  his  celery  salt 


The  Woodsman 

and,  as  he  helps  himself  to  foie  gras,  will  say  that 
after  all  it  was  rather  hard  on  the  plover. 

It  was  the  smell  of  the  woodsman's  fire  that  drew 
me  on  further  in  my  walk.    At  last  by  the  pale  blue 

170 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

mist  of  the  smoke  and  the  damp,  burnt  smell  of  the 
crackling  faggots,  I  found  him  in  a  little  hollow 
waiting  for  his  morning  meal.  His  wife  was  with 
him.  They  had  both  slept  under  the  shelter  of  a 
great  beech  tree  that  night  and  now  she  was  cook- 
ing his  breakfast. 

I  stood  by  and  talked  to  him  about  the  weather 
and  the  prospects  of  the  year,  watching  her  as  she 
chopped  up  onions  and  shallots,  putting  them  one 
by  one  as  she  prepared  them  into  the  pot  that  sim- 
mered appetisingly  on  the  fire.  The  smell  of  the 
stew  reached  my  nostrils.  It  made  me  feel  so 
hungry  that  at  last  I  asked  him  what  it  contained. 

"A  few  bits  of  bacon,  sir,  a  little  potato — onions, 
—shallots " 

He  paused  trying  to  think  what  else. 

"And  little  bits  of  all  sorts,  sir,"  said  his  wife 
looking  up. 

"Well,"  said  I,  "I've  never  smelt  anything  that 
gave  me  a  better  appetite." 

"You're  hungry  for  your  breakfast,  sir — no 
doubt,"  suggested  the  woodsman.  "There's  nothing 
like  an  appetite  to  make  the  simplest  things  seem 
tasty." 

In  a  way  it  was  an  obvious  remark,  yet  it  brought 
171 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

new  things  to  my  mind  when  I  thought  back  to  the 
plover's  eggs. 

Perhaps  one  day  the  first  plover's  egg  will  arrive 
for  the  King  when  he  has  an  appetite — then,  instead 
of  accepting  it,  he  will  order  some  little  bits  of  all 
sorts. 


MAY  27 


HAVE  always  felt  that  Diana  was  no 
ordinary  girl  and  have  as  often  rebuked 
myself  for  so  thinking.  With  an  only 
child,  parents  are  apt  to  be  warped  in 
judgment,  eager  to  find  some  virtue 
which  redounds  to  the  credit  of  them- 
selves. Yet  if  to  the  third  and  fourth 
generation  the  sins  of  the  fathers  descend  upon 
the  children,  then  perhaps  it  is  excusable  in  a  parent 
when  he  is  quick  to  find  a  virtue  in  his  child. 

Nevertheless,  I  have  guarded  well  against  my 
pride  in  this  matter  and,  this  morning,  was  re- 
warded by  the  discovery  of  a  talent  in  my  daughter 
which  fills  me  with  such  feelings  of  pleasure  as  I 
can  make  no  effort  to  disguise. 
Diana  has  taken  to  writing  verses. 
The  sense  of  poetry  in  her,  I  feel  sure,  she  must 
inherit  from  Georgina.  True,  in  the  keeping  of 
this  little  note-book,  I  have  made  use  of  my  pen, 
but  it  has  been  no  more  than  in  record  of  the  daily 
thoughts  and  observations  which  all  this  wonderful 
countryside  has  brought  me.  I  can  claim  no  virtue 

175 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

•of  expression  in  these,  for  though  Georgina  never 
used  her  pen  at  all — even  in  writing  letters  she 
found  it  difficult  to  apply  her  mind — yet  she  spoke 
of  such  thoughts  to  me  as  could  only  have  come 
from  one  deeply  sensitive  to  the  beauty  of  life 
about  her. 

How  strange  then  it  is  that  Diana  should  have 
inherited  this  from  her  mother  when,  ever  since 
I  was  a  young  man  up  at  Oxford,  it  has  been  my 
ambition  to  make  some  slight  contribution  to  the 
literature  of  the  country  in  which  I  was  born.  The 
need  of  patient  application,  a  certain  characteristic 
dilatoriness,  too,  perhaps,  has  always  stood  in  the 
way  of  the  accomplishment  of  my  desire.  I  am 
now  fifty-nine  and  I  suppose  my  pen  will  scarcely 
•ever  do  more  for  me  than  make  these  occasional 
idle  jottings  in  an  idle  book. 

It  is  left  to  Diana  with  the  inheritance  of  her 
mother's  gift  of  seeing  the  beauty  in  life  about 
her,  it  is  left  to  her  to  make  that  contribution  to 
literature  to  which  I  shall  never  attain.  This  is 
no  idle  supposition.  From  the  verses  I  saw  this 
morning  and,  judging  them  with  such  impartiality 
as  a  father  is  capable  of  towards  his  child,  I  am 
certain  that  she  will  create  something  of  repute  in 

176 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

the  world  of  letters,  something  that  cannot  be  en- 
tirely overlooked  by  even  the  severest  judges. 

I  came  across  these  verses  by  chance.  In  her 
bedroom  she  has  a  small,  old  oak  bureau,  ostensi- 
bly, so  she  has  informed  me,  at  which  to  write  her 
letters.  It  was  there  I  found  the  paper  on  which 
the  verses  were  written.  Soon  after  breakfast, 
whilst  she  was  attending  to  household  duties  in  the 
kitchen,  I  had  occasion  to  go  up  to  her  room. 

I  have  discovered,  during  the  last  few  days,  the 
presence  of  a  leaf -cutter  bee  in  the  garden  and  have 
been  curious  to  find  its  nest.  Leaf  after  leaf  on  the 
flowers  in  our  borders  has  shown  me  that  semi- 
circular excision,  so  clearly  cut  as  to  be  unmistakably 
the  work  of  this  inimitable  craftsman.  Some  days 
went  by  before  I  succeeded  in  catching  sight  of  the 
little  creature  at  its  work.  Each  morning  when  I 
went  out  into  the  garden  after  breakfast,  there  were 
fresh  traces  of  its  labour.  Today  I  had  my  reward. 
On  a  petal  of  one  of  the  first  early  roses  that  are 
in  bloom  on  the  standards,  I  saw  the  leaf-cutter 
bee  making  as  neat  a  job  of  its  task  as  any  cutter 
in  a  Bond  Street  tailor's  shop.  With  its  scissor-like 
jaws  it  was  snipping  out  the  semi-circular  pattern 
it  needs  from  the  centre  of  a  gorgeous  red  petal. 

177 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

Until  that  moment  I  had  thought  the  only  material 
they  used  was  leaves.  But  in  the  country  there  may 
well  be  something  new  to  learn  with  every  day  that 
comes. 


I  stood  perfectly  still  until  the  bee  had  finished. 
They  are  timid  creatures — so  unlike  the  honey-bee 
in  this — and  dislike  disturbance  at  their  work.  As 
soon  as  the  last  fraction  was  severed  from  the  petal, 
it  caught  the  piece  in  its  mouth — or  with  its  legs, 

178 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

at  that  distance  I  could  not  be  certain  which — and 
flew  away  to  its  nest.  The  heavy  burden  was  so 
much  an  impediment  that  its  flight  was  slow 
enough  for  me  to  follow  it.  Without  hesitation,  it 
made  directly  for  a  hole  in  the  bricks  below  Diana's 
window.  Without  any  delay  I  went  back  into  the 
house  and  hurried  up  to  her  bedroom.  Leaning 
far  out,  I  could  just  see  the  little  creature  at  work. 

With  infinite  care,  yet  never  pausing,  the  petal 
was  bent  into  a  curve,  then  passed  into  a  burrow  in 
such  a  manner  as  that  the  one  to  follow  might  fit 
into  its  proper  place.  As  soon  as  this  operation  was 
finished,  it  flew  away  again.  I  waited  at  the  win- 
dow, timing  it  by  my  watch  until  it  should  return. 
In  little  more  than  three  minutes  it  was  back  once 
more,  this  time  with  a  piece  of  roseleaf.  Already 
the  nest  was  assuming  its  thimble-like  shape  and 
into  this,  when  all  is  complete,  the  egg  is  dropped 
together  with  the  bread  of  the  bees,  that  mixture  of 
pollen  and  honey  which  is  their  household  food. 

It  was  when  I  had  concluded  my  observations 
and  come  back  into  the  room  that  I  saw  the  sheet 
of  verses  lying  out  on  Diana's  desk.  It  did  not 
occur  to  me  to  regard  them  as  private.  I  picked 
them  up  and  read. 

179 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

Between  the  May  and  the  Rose, 

With  the  Summer  just  begun, 
When  the  highest  leaf  on  the  poplar  knows 

The  warmth  of  the  morning  sun; 

Between  the  May  and  the  Rose, 

With  the  broken  buds  aglow, 
When  the  lark  uplifted  to  Heaven  knows 

The  all  that  he'll  ever  know; 

Between  the  May  and  the  Rose, 
When  our  touching  hands  are  one, 

We  shall  know  what  God  in  His  Heaven  knows, 
With  the  Summer  just  begun. 

As  soon  as  I  had  read  them  once,  I  read  them 
again.  "I  must  not,"  I  said  to  myself — "I  must  not 
let  my  judgment  be  biased  because  this  is  Diana's 
work.  Pride  is  no  critic  and  should  have  no  say 
in  a  matter  like  this.  Then  what,"  I  asked  myself, 
"would  you  think  of  it  were  you  to  hear  that  it 
had  been  copied  from  the  work  of  a  well  known 
poet?" 

I  was  compelled  to  confess  that  I  thought  it 
really  fine. 

Surely  it  cannot  be  a  copy  of  some  poet  she  ad- 
mires! Would  she  not  have  written  his  name  be- 
low? 

1 80 


MAY  28 


AM  glad  I  was  right.     Diana  wrote 
the  verses.     I  spoke  to  her  about 
them  last  evening  at  supper  and,  in 
the  confusion  of  admitting  their 
authorship,  the  blood  came  warm- 
ly into  her  cheeks  as  though  she 
were  ashamed  of  them. 

"There  is  nothing  to  be  ashamed 
of,  my  dear  girl,"  said  I. 

"But  I  had  not  intended  anyone 
to  see  them,"  she  replied. 

"Well,  I'm  very  glad  I  did,"  I  returned.  "I  don't 
want  to  pretend  that  they're  anything  really  won- 
derful, but  they  certainly  show  promise  of  your 
being  able  to  write  good  poetry.  They're  simple; 
there's  a  certain  amount  of  observation,  a  distinct 
feeling  for  the  beauty  of  things  about  them.  I'd 
even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  it  is  a  long  time  since 
I've  read  anything  I  liked  better." 

I  said  no  more  than  that.     It  would  be  a  pity, 
I  thought,  if  I  praised  her  so  much  as  to  give  her 
too  exalted  a  notion  of  what  she  had  done.     So  I 
kept  my  feelings  to  myself. 
13  183 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"What  made  you  think  of  writing  them?"  I 
asked. 

She  became  confused  once  more  and  said  some- 
thing to  the  effect  that  she  supposed  they  were 
very  foolish ;  that  she  had  been  reading  some  poetry 
and  had  probably  tried  to  imitate  it. 

I  liked  this  modesty  in  her  and  pursued  the 
matter  no  farther. 

"She'll  write  something  else  soon,"  I  said  to 
myself.  A  gift  like  that  is  not  meant  to  lie  idle  be- 
cause the  owner  of  it  is  consumed  with  modesty. 

We  shall  know  what  God  in  His  Heaven  knows, 
With  the  Summer  just  begun. 

There  is  so  much  promise  to  me  in  those  two 
lines  that  I  have  said  them  over  and  again  to 
myself.  I  said  them  this  morning  as  I  looked  out 
of  my  bedroom  window.  What  a  time  of  the  year ! 
"Between  the  May  and  the  Rose,  with  the  Summer 
just  begun."  It  was  this  time  of  all  that  Georgina 
loved  the  best.  She  was  just  beginning  to  see  the 
fruits  of  her  pruning — the  roses  were  in  bud. 


JUNE  10 


HIS  is  the  day  on  which  Georgina  died. 
I  have  opened  wide  the  window  in  her 
bedroom  and  all  the  sounds  of  Summer 
now  come  are  filling  the  silent  room. 
Death  cannot  be  the  end.  How  could  the 
Summer  be  with  us  again  and  Georgina 
really  be  gone?  She  was  more  to  me 
than  a  thousand  Summers. 


JUNE  12 


r 

y  CANNOT  truthfully  say  that  I  believe  in 
V\,      fairies,  but  the  fairy  story  is  a  thing  I 

m     V/ 

./.  (\     feel  sure  the  world  could  ill  do  without. 
f\ 

On  a  shelf  in  the  old  nursery  which  has 

now  become  a  sewing-room,  stand  all  the 
books  of  fairy  tales  which  Diana  read 
when  she  was  a  child.  I  believe  she 
sometimes  reads  them  still. 

I  am  no  high-churchman,  yet  I  have 
always  believed  in  symbols,  especially  for 
the  minds  of  children.  Unless  you  train 
the  eye  to  an  ideal  of  beauty,  it  is  apt  to  see 
nothing  but  ugliness  when  it  comes  to  know  the 
thing  that  is  real.  I  cannot  think  why  this  should 
be  so  and  it  is  with  much  regret  that  I  admit  it. 
Perhaps  it  is  the  stain  of  the  sin  of  origin  left 
clinging  in  the  mind  and  if  that  be  so,  then  doubly 
is  it  the  duty  of  every  parent  to  train  in  his  child 
the  power  of  seeing  beauty  everywhere.  So,  when 
it  comes  to  the  realities  in  life  it  will  be  able  to 
see  them  in  their  true  proportion. 

I  always  used  to  tell  Diana,  as  I  myself  and  many 
191 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

another  has  been  told,  that  when  the  birds  lifted 
up  their  heads  after  drinking,  it  was  to  give  thanks 
to  the  Almighty  for  the  quenching  of  their  thirst. 
For  many,  many  years,  I  know  she  believed  that 


this  was  true  and  then  one  day,  when  she  was  in 
her  teens,  she  came  to  me  and  said : 

"Daddy,  when  a  bird  puts  back  its  head  after  it's 
been  drinking,  it's  to  let  the  water  run  down  its 
throat." 

"Yes,"  said  I. 

"You  told  me  it  was  saying  grace,  Daddy." 

"Yes,"  said  I. 

192 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Well — it  isn't  half  so  nice  now  that  I  know  it's 
only  the  water  running  down  its  throat." 

"Would  it  have  been  nice  at  all  if  you'd  known 
that  all  along?"  I  asked  her. 

She  sat  and  looked  at  me  for  quite  a  long  while 
and  then  at  last  she  put  out  both  her  hands. 

"I  believe  old  people  are  very  wise,"  said  she. 
And  I  was  only  fifty  then. 

I  have  recalled  this  little  fact  because  of  some- 
thing that  occurred  last  evening.  We  have  some 
wealthy  neighbours  at  Cawdlett  Park.  Young  Mr. 
Fielding  has  just  inherited  through  his  father's 
death.  We  went  there  last  night  to  dinner. 

I  knew  the  old  gentleman  quite  well.  He  was  a 
stern  man ;  virtuous  and  just,  honourable  and  good, 
but  he  found  no  beauty  in  life  and  therefore  could 
not  teach  it  to  his  son.  The  boy  was  sent  out  early 
into  the  world  and,  with  little  patrimony  from  his 
father,  had  to  fight  his  own  way.  Two  things  he 
did.  He  lost  all  touch  with  the  religion  in  which 
he  had  been  brought  up  and  he  became  a  socialist. 

Now  it  seems  you  must  be  poor  to  be  a  socialist. 
He  had  often  propounded  his  theories  to  me  for 
he  had  the  honesty  of  his  father  and  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  tell  me  that  religious  worship  no  longer  con- 

193 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

veyed  a  meaning  to  his  mind.  I  did  not  dislike  him 
for  that  I  felt  sorry — that  was  all. 

Last  evening  then  I  had  no  little  curiosity  to  see 
how  the  sudden  change  of  fortune  had  operated 
upon  his  ideas.  We  were  six  at  dinner.  Young 
Mr.  Tregenna  and  his  sister  were  there.  I  know  I 
concealed  my  smile  when  to  him  was  given  the 
honour  of  taking  in  Diana.  Probably  no  one  but 
I  saw  the  faint  flush  in  her  cheeks  as  she  laid  her 
hand  on  his  arm.  I  know  she  must  have  been  think- 
ing of  the  little  wooden  cross  under  the  apple  tree. 

There  was,  too,  it  seemed  to  me,  just  a  thought 
of  victory  in  his  eye.  He  looked  proud  to  be  him- 
self, if  I  can  put  it  in  such  a  way,  and  indeed  he 
had  every  good  reason.  Diana  was  looking  most 
beautiful.  I  must  not  praise  her;  she  is  my  own 
daughter.  But  never  have  I  seen  such  fine  straight 
limbs  or  a  head  set  so  proudly  on  such  shoulders 
as  her  evening  dress  displayed.  I  say  never,  yet 
there  was  Georgina,  as  I  knew  Georgina  first. 

As  we  were  all  collected  about  the  table,  I  began 
in  silence  to  say  my  grace  to  myself  when  Mr. 
Fielding  looked  across  at  me  and  said: 

"Vicar,  will  you  say  grace  ?" 

I  hope  I  did  not  show  surprise,  and  bending  my 
194 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

head,  I  repeated  the  old  form  such  as  I  have  said 
from  childhood : 

"For  what  we  are  going  to  receive,  may  the  Lord 
make  its  truly  thankful,  for  Jesus  Christ's  sake. 
Amen." 

It  was  not  until  after  dinner  when  the  ladies  had 
gone  that  I  had  the  opportunity  of  asking  him  why 
his  ideas  had  changed. 

"What  ideas?"  said  he. 

"Your  religious  ideas." 

"Oh — you  mean  my  asking  you  to  say  grace.  I 
always  say  it  at  meals  myself  now." 

"Then  they  have  changed?"  I  enquired. 

"No — no — I  think  just  the  same,  but  you  see  our 
butler  who  was  here  nearly  all  through  my  father's 
time — he'd  be  horrified  if  we  sat  down  to  dinner 
without  saying  grace.  I  do  it  for  him." 

"Do  you  carry  your  socialism  as  far  as  that?" 
asked  Tregenna. 

"Well — I  don't  think  he  would  be  so  pleased  if  I 
raised  his  wages  instead.  You  see,  I  find,  now  that 
I've  inherited,  that  you  only  have  real  liberty  when 
you're  poor.  A  man  struggles  to  get  rich  in  order 
to  gain  or  buy  his  independence  and  the  more  money 
he  gets,  the  more  he  lavishes  it  on  convention.  It's 

195 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

not  liberty  he's  buying.  With  every  fresh  sovereign 
that  he  makes,  he  buys  another  link  in  the  chain  of 
his  own  slavery.  Wealth  is  the  most  overrated 
thing  in  the  whole  of  this  world.  It's  the  most 
misunderstood.  Once  upon  a  time  I'd  have  snapped 
my  fingers  in  the  face  of  that  butler  rather  than 
have  said  grace.  I  was  poor  then  and  I  was  free." 

Now  all  of  this  was  very  true.  At  least  it  seemed 
so  to  me.  I  record  no  more  of  what  he  said  be- 
cause from  there  he  soared  into  the  heights  of  his 
socialistic  theories  and,  though  no  doubt  they  were 
interesting,  they  did  not  concern  me. 

"It  all  comes,"  I  thought,  "of  the  want  of  train- 
ing in  youth."  Firmly  as  old  Mr.  Fielding  believed 
in  the  forms  of  his  religion,  he  never  told  his  son 
that  the  birds  were  saying  their  grace  when  they 
lifted  their  heads.  He  had  never  thought  that  they 
do  anything  but  let  the  water  trickle  down  their 
throats. 

No— I  believe  in  fairy  tales,  and  you  will  not  find 
them  in  socialism.  There  must  be  a  prince  and 
there  must  be  a  beggar  or  you  would  never  have 
a  story  to  read. 

"You  all  stayed  a  very  long  time  in  the  dining- 
room,"  said  Diana  to  me  as  we  walked  home. 

196 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Did  you  find  it  long?"  said  I. 

"Oh,  no !  I  didn't,"  she  replied  quickly  and  then, 
taking  my  arm  she  hummed  a  little  tune  as  we 
walked  along. 


JUNE  14 


14 


HAVE  often  speculated  on  the  fondness 
shown  by  robins  for  the  interiors  of 
churches.  Scarcely  one  of  the  books  by 
the  various  authorities  I  have  consulted 
even  mentions  the  fact.  The  Reverend 
C.  A.  Johns  alludes  to  it  and  with  all 
that  he  says  in  a  brief  reference  to  the 
subject,  I  am  in  complete  agreement.  It 
is  undoubtedly  for  the  sake  of  company 
that  they  frequent  our  places  of  worship, 
for  I  have  seldom  heard  of  a  robin  building  its  nest 
inside  a  church,  and  it  is  nearly  always  at  the  hour 
of  service  they  are  to  be  seen  there. 

Last  evening,  the  one  that  has  attached  himself 
to  our  church,  flew  in  through  an  open  window  in 
the  chancel  and,  seating  himself  upon  a  pinnacle  of 
the  old  choir  screen,  sang  with  us  the  Nunc  Dimittis. 
All  heads  I  know  were  raised  from  their  books, 
all  eyes  were  turned  upon  him  as  he  sat  there,  his 
throat  swelling,  his  beak  wide  open  as  he  poured 
out  his  glorious  notes.  Every  one  must  have  heard 
them  above  the  organ,  even  above  the  voices  in  the 
choir,  so  shrill  and  sweet  they  were. 

201 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Lord,  now  lettest  Thou  Thy  servant  depart  in 
peace,  according  to  Thy  word;  for  mine  eyes  have 
seen  Thy  salvation,  which  Thou  hast  prepared  be- 
fore the  face  of  all  people." 

It  is  my  habit,  well  as  I  know  the  words  of 
morning  and  evening  prayer,  never  to  look  about 
me,  lest  my  attention  might  stray.  But  on  this 
occasion,  I  could  not  refrain  from  watching  this 
little  creature  or  from  listening  to  every  note  that 
he  uttered.  And  as  I  listened,  I  suppose  I  must 
have  stopped  in  my  singing,  the  better  to  hear  him 
perhaps;  perhaps  because  my  voice,  never  at  any 
time  too  tuneful,  was  disturbing  in  my  ears  to  the 
beauty  of  his  song.  Whatever  it  was,  I  became  silent 
and  then  was  slowly  made  aware  that  every  one 
else  had  ceased  from  singing,  too.  So  intent  was 
my  mind  upon  the  robin  I  was  not  fully  conscious 
of  it  until  the  last  voice  had  stopped  and,  to  the  soft 
notes  of  the  organ,  that  little  bird  was  singing  alone. 

It  was  only  for  a  moment  or  so  and  then  the 
chant  was  finished.  As  though  suddenly  we  had  all 
come  to  our  senses,  we  joined  again  in  singing 
Amen  and,  with  the  cessation  of  the  music,  the 
robin  flew  up  into  the  rafters  and  was  hidden  from 
sight. 

202 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  glanced  at  Diana,  who  sings  close  beside  me 
in  the  choir  and,  may  be  it  was  only  the  light  of 
the  dropping  sun  casting  its  rays  through  the  west 
window  in  the  nave,  but  I  thought  her  eyes  were 
glittering  and  bright. 

When  service  was  over,  I  found  Diana  outside 
waiting  for  me  and  talking  to  the  Tregennas.  They 
were  speaking  of  course  about  what  had  occurred. 
It  was,  in  fact,  I  am  sure,  the  topic  of  conversation 
round  every  supper  table  that  evening.  Young 
Allan  Tregenna,  who  had  come  up  to  meet  them 
as  they  filed  out  of  church,  was  being  told  all  about 
it.  We  broke  up  into  two  parties  as  we  started 
away  from  the  door.  Diana  joined  him  and  I  came 
along  behind  them  with  the  two  ladies. 

They  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  known  anything 
so  strange  happen  at  a  service  in  church  before 
and,  as  I  thought  over  it,  I  was  compelled  to  admit 
I  had  not. 

"You  must  have  been  rather  annoyed,"  said  Mrs. 
Tregenna,  "when  everyone  stopped  singing." 

"Why?"  I  asked  her. 

"Well — because  it  interfered  with  the  service." 

"I  can't  say  I  thought  it  did,"  said  I.  "I  stopped 
singing  myself,  but  then  I  don't  sing  well.  Yet 

203 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

had  everyone  there  been  singing  beautifully,  I  don't 
think  I  should  have  regretted  their  silence  then." 

Miss  Tregenna  looked  up  at  me. 

"I  know  what  you  mean,"  said  she. 

"Yes,"  I  continued,  "there  is  always  the  spirit 
of  the  thing  and  the  thing  itself." 

I  often  preach  my  little  sermons  after  church. 
It  is  not  truly  the  place  for  them  I  know,  but  some- 
times when  two  or  three  of  us  are  walking  back 
together,  I  am  drawn  into  talking  and  many  times 
have  found  myself  giving  better  expression  to  things 
than  ever  I  do  in  the  pulpit.  It  is  again  the  spirit 
of  the  thing,  while  often  in  the  pulpit  it  is  only  the 
thing  itself.  I  mean  no  irrevence  to  the  church  by 
that,  but  a  sermon  should  be  a  conversation — one- 
sided I  admit — and  in  the  pulpit  I  often  feel  too 
far  away  to  converse.  As  we  walk  home  together, 
it  is  a  different  matter,  yet  it  is  frequently  just  as 
one-sided  then.  I  am  sure  I  talk  too  much. 

"Well,"  I  went  on,  "I  know  we  were  all  singing 
the  Nunc  Dimittis  and  I  know  that  all  our  hearts 
were  in  what  we  sang.  But  there  was  something 
spontaneous  in  the  voice  of  that  robin,  which  none 
of  us  had  got  in  ours.  The  habit  of  prayer,  the 
habit  of  praise,  we  have  become  so  used  to  them 

204 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

that  often  I  must  pull  myself  up  when  I  am  read- 
ing or  singing  to  realise  the  meaning  of  the  words. 
And  in  all  the  religious  worship  throughout  the 
whole  of  our  country  and  everywhere  where  the 
form  of  worship  only  faintly  varies,  how  much  of 
habit  do  you  think  there  must  be  in  the  hymns 
that  are  sung  and  the  prayers  that  are  prayed  ?" 

I  looked  at  them  both,  at  Mrs.  Tregenna  on  my 
right — at  her  daughter  on  my  left.  They  said 
nothing  and  I  knew  that  I  had  brought  to  their 
minds  the  realisation  of  how  their  own  prayers  were 
often  said. 

"There  was  nothing  of  habit,"  I  went  on  pres- 
ently, "in  the  way  that  robin  sang.  He  has  sung  his 
song  a  thousand  times,  but  that  is  ever  the  way  with 
birds.  A  new  day  and  they  sing  their  song  afresh 
as  though  it  were  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives. 
And  that  is  worship — that  is  thankfulness.  It  must 
come  more  than  from  the  ready  obedience  of  the 
heart;  it  must  come  from  the  full  energy  of  the 
spirit.  You  cannot  praise  God  by  rote;  you  must 
praise  Him  by  inspiration." 

This  brought  me  to  my  door  and  I  said  how  sorry 
I  was  to  inflict  another  sermon  upon  them  and  all 
in  one  evening. 

205 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

Miss  Tregenna  shook  my  hand  and  said: 
"I  liked  the  second  one  best." 
"Perhaps  it  was  inspired,"  said  I,  and  then,  look- 
ing about  for  Diana,  I  found  that  she  had  gone 


"She  had  gone  on  down  the  road 
with  her  companion." 

on  down  the  road  with  her  companion.     It  is  a 
pity  they  are  not  friends. 

This  morning  Diana  came  down  to  breakfast, 
when  for  some  moments  I  stood  looking  at  her  in 

206 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

amazement.  I  would  hardly  have  recognised  her. 
She  has  put  up  her  hair.  She  has  become  a  woman. 

"Oh,  my  dear,"  said  I  involuntarily,  for  a  thou- 
sand times  more  than  ever  did  she  remind  me  of 
Georgina. 

She  stood  there  returning  my  look  while  many 
expressions  passed  across  her  eyes.  Her  cheeks 
grew  pink  and  then  grew  pale  again;  her  eyes  kept 
shutting  and  opening.  She  smiled  and  then  the 
smile  would  die  away.  At  last  she  could  bear  my 
scrutiny  no  longer.  She  came  and  put  her  arms 
round  my  neck  and  hid  my  eyes  from  her. 

"Does  it  look  horrid?"  she  asked. 

"My  dear,"  said  I,  and  at  the  back  of  her  neck, 
which  is  like  a  baby's,  I  kissed  her.  Her  head  was 
hidden  on  my  shoulder.  There  was  no  other  place 
to  kiss. 

I  had  news  this  afternoon  that  distressed  me. 
Allan  Tregenna  will  have  to  go  out  to  his  uncle's 
farm  in  California  in  three  months'  time.  I  have 
liked  that  boy  and  shall  miss  him  when  he  is  gone. 

I  asked  Diana  had  she  heard  of  it.  She  nodded 
her  head.  He  told  her  yesterday,  it  seemed,  as  they 
walked  back  from  church. 


207 


JUNE  21 


PAIR  of  thrushes  that  mated  last  year 
and  built  their  nest  in  the  densest  corner 
of  the  quickset  hedge,  have  again  mated 
this  and  set  up  house  in  the  heart  of  a 
Portugal  laurel  on  the  lawn.  I  have  no 
right  to  state  this  as  a  fact  beyond  my 
own  convictions,  for,  so  far  as  I  can 
make  out,  there  is  nothing  to  prove  that 
the  same  birds  do  pair  one  season  after 
another.  In  most  cases,  flocking  as  they  do  in  the 
Winter,  birds  change  their  mates  in  the  Spring. 
But  these  two  thrushes  I  make  certain  in  my  mind 
are  the  same.  This  is  how  I  know. 

Whenever  after  a  shower  I  saw  the  female 
on  the  lawn  last  Summer,  she  limped,  having  at 
some  time  or  another  hurt  her  leg.  I  readily  recog- 
nised her  again.  In  a  garden  where  the  same  birds 
stay  year  after  year,  I  suppose  anyone  will  accept 
that  as  proof  conclusive.  She  at  least  is  the  same 
bird.  And  he — well,  I  am  not  quite  so  certain 
about  him,  but  last  year  her  mate  when  the  sun 
was  dropping  had  the  habit  of  sitting  on  the  top- 

211 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

most  twig  of  a  scarlet  may-tree  and  singing  for  half 
an  hour  together.  Now  he  does  just  the  same  this 
year  and  so  constantly  do  you  see  the  force  of 
habits  in  birds  that  I  make  sure  it  is  the  identical 
couple  come  together  once  more  to  share  the  anxiety 
and  responsibilities  of  the  home. 

It  gives  me  no  little  pleasure,  I  must  confess, 
to  find  this  example  of  monogamy  in  birds.  I 
should  like  to  pursue  the  matter  further,  for  it  is 
my  belief  that  it  is  far  more  commonly  the  case 
than  most  people  suppose.  But  to  do  this  I  must 
in  some  way  catch  and  mark  my  birds  and  I  can 
imagine  little  sympathy  from  Diana  in  the  process. 

We  have  both  been  engaged  during  the  last  few 
weeks  in  a  most  engrossing  study — the  songs  of  all 
the  different  birds  in  the  garden.  In  the  evenings 
we  sit  out  on  the  lawn  in  the  seat  under  the  mulberry 
tree,  listening  for  the  last  note  of  the  blackcap  until 
the  sun  sets  and  the  first  notes  of  the  nightingale 
begin. 

Every  stave  of  their  song  we  whistle  over  again. 
It  is  astonishing  how  well  girls  whistle  now-a-days. 
Diana  is  much  surer  of  her  notes  than  am  I. 
Georgina  could  never  make  a  sound  between  her 
lips  at  all. 

212 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

When  then  we  have  repeated  it  two  or  three 
times  until  she  is  certain  of  it,  Diana  writes  down 
the  notes  in  a  note-book  ruled  with  lines  for  music 
and  later  renders  them  with  their  proper  harmonies 
into  a  series  of — I  cannot  describe  them  better  than 
— preludes.  Chopin  I  believe  wrote  many  preludes 
— a  couple  of  lines  of  music,  the  brief  records  of 
thoughts  that  flashed  across  his  brain.  But  these 
to  my  mind  are  better  than  that.  They  are  Nature's 
preludes  to  eternity;  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  think 
of  a  world  where  birds  will  never  sing.  Diana  plays 
them  to  me  in  the  evenings  when  all  the  birds 
are  silent.  Our  piano  is  tinkly  perhaps,  but  it  has 
a  sweetness  when  the  soft  pedal  is  down  and  I 
would  not  have  one  of  your  Bluthners  or  Bechsteins 
in  place  of  it.  So  far,  in  our  repertoire,  we  have 
the  blackcap  and  the  nightingale — the  thrush,  the 
blackbird  and  the  haybird.  In  time  we  shall  collect 
them  all. 

The  other  evening  as  we  sat  out  there,  trying 
to  follow  the  phrases  of  a  robin's  song  as  he  sat 
singing  in  the  lilac  tree,  Allan  Tregenna  came  across 
the  orchard  and  looked  over  our  wicket  gate.  Diana 
was  whistling  a  stave  she  had  just  heard  and  did 
not  hear  him  approach,  so,  for  a  moment  or  two,, 

213 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  saw  him  stand  there  listening  until  it  was  fin- 
ished. 

"Well  done,"  he  said  when  it  came  to  an  end. 

She  turned  quickly  and  her  cheeks  grew  scarlet. 
Women  are  mysterious  creatures  to  me;  they  will 
acquire  a  masculine  trick  such  as  this,  but  when 
caught  at  it,  will  be  covered  with  confusion.  Be- 
sides, what  did  it  matter  if  he  heard  her?  Most 
girls  can  whistle  now-a-days  and  I  should  have 
thought  Diana  would  have  been  the  last  to  be 
ashamed  of  the  accomplishment. 

"Come  and  sit  down  here,"  said  I.  "We're  only 
trying  to  catch  the  song  of  a  robin.  We're  just 
stenographers,  amanuenses,  whatever  you  like  to 
call  us.  We're  trying  to  take  it  down  in  shorthand. 
He's  the  composer." 

I  got  up  from  the  seat  under  the  mulberry  tree 
and  gave  him  my  place. 

"You  can  whistle  better  than  I  can,"  said  I. 
"Besides,  I  must  go  in  and  write  some  letters." 

And  I  left  them  there,  never  thinking  until  it 
was  too  late  whether  I  were  wise  in  doing  so.  I 
should  have  felt  sorry  indeed  had  there  been  a 
repetition  of  their  disagreements,  for  there  is  a  hot 
temper  I  know  in  Diana  and  I  am  sure  she  has  not 

214 


15 


The  Vicar 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

yet  forgotten  the  bullfinch  buried  under  the  apple 
tree  in  the  kitchen  garden. 

No  doubt  my  thoughts  were  over-concerned  about 
it,  for  I  found  it  difficult  to  concentrate  my  atten- 
tion upon  my  letters.  All  through  the  writing  of 
them,  I  heard  the  song  of  that  robin  loud  above  my 
thoughts. 

"We  shall  have  another  prelude  added  to  our 
repertoire,"  said  I,  and  as  soon  as  my  last  letter 
was  sealed  and  stamped,  I  went  out  into  the  garden 
to  see  how  Diana  had  progressed. 

She  had  done  nothing.  The  book  lay  open  on 
her  lap  and  never  a  note  was  written  there. 

"Oh— why?"  said  I. 

"He  hasn't  been  singing  just  lately — has  he?" 
said  young  Allan. 

"Singing!"  I  replied.  "I  could  hardly  write  my 
letters  for  his  interruptions." 

Diana  closed  the  book  on  her  lap. 

"Yes — I  think  I  heard  him,"  said  she. 

"You  do  understand  what  we're  doing,  don't 
you  ?"  said  I.  He  shook  his  head.  I  told  him  then 
how  Diana  was  collecting  the  songs  of  all  the  birds 
about  us  and  setting  them  into  what  it  pleased  us 
to  call  preludes. 

217 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Am  I  to  hear  them  ?"  he  asked. 
I  suggested  to  Diana  that  she  should  go  and  play 
them  to  him  then.     The  windows  of  the  drawing- 

> 

room  open  onto  the  lawn.  I  could  hear  the  music 
from  where  I  was.  The  sun  had  just  gone  down 
and  the  whole  garden  was  warm  with  the  light  of 
the  glorious  clouds.  They  burnt  like  a  bonfire 
through  the  trees  in  the  orchard. 

"Go  and  play  them  to  him  now,"  said  I.  "I'll  sit 
here  and  listen." 

Without  a  word  she  picked  up  her  book  and 
walked  across  to  the  drawing-room.  Without  a 
word,  he  followed  her. 

I  waited  a  little  while  in  the  silence,  thinking 
of  these  two;  then,  as  the  first  gently  tinkling 
notes  of  the  piano  crept  out  into  the  garden, 
stealing  through  the  bushes  and  across  the  scented 
stocks  to  my  ears,  all  thoughts  of  them  vanished. 
I  was  alone  with  Georgina.  So  she  used  to 
play  to  me  in  the  days  of  our  courting;  so  she 
often  played  to  me  through  the  years  we  were 
married. 

I  suppose  I  do  not  really  care  for  music,  for 
it  was  not  the  harmonies  or  the  melodies  that  my 
ears  listened  to  with  such  intent.  It  was  just  the 

218 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

impression  and  the   memories   which   the  sounds 
were  bringing  me. 

All  the  house  was  in  twilight.  In  no  room  had 
they  yet  lit  the  lamps.  But  in  the  drawing-room, 
through  the  open  window,  I  could  see  the  figure 
and  the  head  of  Diana,  her  profile  just  outlined 
in  the  darkness  of  the  room  by  the  light  of  the 
two  candles  that  were  burning  in  their  sconces  on 
the  piano. 

It  brought  me  back  the  whole  of  twenty  years. 
There  she  was  playing  Georgina  to  my  memories. 
I  must  have  been  lost  in  a  reverie,  thinking  almost 
that  she  was  Georgina  herself,  when  some  shadow 
moved  in  the  room.  I  saw  the  silhouette  of  a  head 
as  it  leant  forward  against  the  candle-light;  I  saw 
the  dark  line  of  an  arm  stretched  across  to  turn  the 
pages  of  the  music.  It  was  young  Allan.  For  all 
those  wonderful  moments  of  my  reverie,  I  had  for- 
gotten him.  At  last  it  broke  out  upon  me  with  a 
sudden  rush — I  must  not  call  it  fear.  She  was 
playing  not  to  my  memories,  but  to  him;  and  there 
was  I,  with  all  the  years  behind  me,  watching  my 
own  story  being  told  to  me  again.  With  an  over- 
whelming conviction,  I  knew  in  that  moment  the 
story  was  the  same. 

219 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

What  man  I  thought  could  sit  there  and  listen 
to  my  Diana  playing,  without  knowing  the  same 
love  that  I  had  known  for  Georgina?  A  thousand 
little  proofs  came  readily  to  my  mind — the  empty 
page  of  the  note-book,  the  flush  upon  her  cheeks, 
the  verses  of  poetry,  the  expressions  which  passed 
across  her  face  that  morning  after  she  had  put  up 
her  hair. 

Yes — I  know  now  Diana  is  in  love.  And  he, 
of  course,  must  be.  I  dared  not  let  my  mind  run 
into  speculations  then  upon  what  all  of  it  would 
mean.  I  have  wished  often  that  they  should  be 
friends;  how  could  I  be  sorry  to  find  that  they 
are  lovers  now. 

Yet  a  feeling  of  loneliness  came  over  me  and, 
try  how  I  might,  I  could  not  drive  it  away.  At 
last  I  knew  I  could  not  stay  and  watch  them  any 
longer.  I  left  my  seat  in  the  garden  and,  creeping 
past  the  window  of  the  drawing-room,  I  entered 
the  house  by  another  way  and  went  up  to  Georgina's 
room. 

Pulling  the  blinds  and  opening  the  window,  I 
could  still  hear  the  sounds  of  the  piano.  I  felt 
more  comfortable  there.  For  some  little  while  they 
continued.  Diana  would  play  a  prelude,  then  play 

220 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

it  again  and  then  again.  But  at  last  the  music 
stopped.  The  whole  evening  was  steeped  in  silence. 

What  were  they  doing  then?  I  felt  his  lips  on 
the  smooth  cool  skin  of  Diana's  cheeks. 

"I  know  I  kissed  Georgina,"  thought  I. 

At  ten  o'clock  when  Diana  went  to  bed,  I  kissed 
her  first  on  the  left  cheek,  which  is  my  custom. 
She  was  just  about  to  turn  away  when  I  caught 
her  head  in  my  hands  and  kissed  her  on  the  other 
cheek  as  well. 

How  was  I  to  know  which  cheek  it  was  ? 


JUNE  25 


HE  last  entry  I  made  in  this  note-book 
began  with  reference  to  a  pair  of 
thrushes  that  had  mated  again  this 
year  and  now  there  comes  to  my 
notice  an  incident  in  the  parish,  bear- 
ing some  similarity,  it  seems  to  me, 
to  the  case  of  the  birds  I  have  quoted. 
Diana  brought  me  word  of  it.  All 
the  things  that  happen  in  the  village 
come  quickly  to  her  ears.  She  spoke 
of  it  this  morning  at  breakfast. 

"Do  you  remember  Eliza  Selby?"  she  asked  me. 
I  thought  awhile;  I  can  remember  well  enough 
the  names  of  birds,  but  the  names  of  people  often 
escape  me. 

"Who  was  she?"  I  asked. 

"Don't  worry,"  she  replied.  "You  never  knew 
her.  Years  and  years  before  you  came  here,  she 
married  a  man  named  Fuel  and  went  to  live  at 
Long  Allingham.  But  you  know  Fastnedge,  don't 
you?" 

I  nodded  my  head.    I  was  glad  I  did  know  him. 
225 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"The  poor  old  fellow,"  said  I,  "who  lives  down 
in  that  cottage  near  the  mill." 

"Do  you  know  how  old  he  is?"  she  asked. 

"He  was  seventy  when  his  wife  died,"  said  I, 
"that  was  five  years  ago — wasn't  it?" 

"Yes — he's  seventy-five — and  do  you  know 
what's  happened  ?" 

All  that  she  said,  suggested  to  me  that  the  poor 
old  man  had  died  suddenly,  yet  that  was  not  in 
the  tone  of  her  voice. 

"What  has  happened?"  I  asked.  "Am  I  wanted 
there  now  ?"  I  was  beginning  to  fold  my  serviette. 
I  felt  sure  there  was  something  for  me  to  do. 

"There's  no  hurry,"  said  Diana  smiling. 
"There's  more  to  tell  yet.  It  appears  that  nearly 
fifty — well,  I  suppose  forty-five  years  ago,  he  and 
Eliza  Selby  were  engaged  to  be  married.  Then  they 
fell  out  over  something  or  other  and  she  married 
Fuel  and  went  to  Long  Allingham.  I  forget  whom 
Fastnedge  married,  but  he  stayed  on  here." 

"Well?"  said  I.  She  was  taking  so  long  over 
the  telling  of  it  that  by  now  my  curiosity  was  well 
aroused. 

"Well — now  his  wife  and  her  husband  are  dead 
and  it  seems  they've  been  fond  of  each  other  all 

226 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

the  time,  because  she's  come  over  from  Long  Ailing- 
ham  and  she's  living  with  him  in  his  little  cottage." 

"But  she  must  be  nearly  seventy,"  said  I. 

"I  know;  that's  the  funny  part  of  it." 

"Where  were  they  married?"  I  enquired. 

"They're  not  married,"  said  Diana  and  I  knew 
she  was  closely  watching  my  face.  I  rolled  up 
my  serviette  and  fitted  it  through  the  silver  ring 
which  was  one  of  our  wedding  presents  when 
Georgina  and  I  were  married.  I  did  not  know 
what  to  say.  For  the  moment  it  bewildered  me, 
yet  I  cannot  admit  that  I  felt  anything  more  than 
that.  I  do  not  know  what  I  felt. 

"I  shall  go  down  and  see  them  now,"  said  I,  and 
straightway  I  went. 

The  cottage  in  which  Fastnedge  has  lived  for 
these  last  thirty  years  is  just  beside  Horlock's  Mill. 
The  sound  of  the  water  turning  the  old  wooden 
wheel  continues  there  like  a  song,  never  variant 
yet  never  monotonous,  night  and  day.  The  stream 
supplying  it,  sets  off  through  an  avenue  of  willow 
trees  out  into  the  broad  country,  beside  meadows 
that  grow  such  a  variety  of  wild  flowers  as  I  have 
ever  seen.  There  on  the  banks  of  it  the  sedge- 
warbler  and  the  reed-warbler,  the  buntings  and 

227 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

moor-hens  build  their  nests  and  bring  up  their 
young  in  perfect  peace  and  absolute  seclusion. 
Wild  mint  and  forget-me-nots  grow  thick  together 
there.  At  places  it  .tunnels  its  way  beneath  the 
trees  and  the  water  rats  swim  fearlessly  in  the 
shadows. 

There  is  an  old  green  punt  on  the  open  stretch 
of  water  near  the  wheel.  It  belongs  to  Horlock, 
the  miller.  He  kindly  gives  me  the  free  use  of  it, 
but  I  have  not  been  in  it  for  more  than  a  twelve 
month.  Yet  many  were  the  days  when  Georgina 
and  I  drove  it  up  those  murmuring  waters,  under 
the  willows  and  the  oak  trees,  forever  turning  the 
countless  bends  and  corners  when  the  meadows  and 
the  country  opened  wide  between  a  break  of  the 
trees  and  then  was  lost  again. 

Until  he  was  well  nigh  seventy,  Fastnedge 
worked  in  the  mill  and  then,  as  a  kind  of  pension, 
young  Horlock,  who  had  taken  on  the  work  after 
his  father,  allowed  him  to  stay  on  at  a  re- 
duced rent  which  Fastnedge  pays  out  of  the  odd 
jobs  he  does  about  the  place.  Rheumatism  has  set 
his  bones,  for  I  fancy  it  must  be  a  damp  spot  to 
live  in.  He  walks  with  the  aid  of  a  stick  and  is 
a  shadow  of  the  man  he  was.  I  have  a  great  affec- 

228 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

tion  for  him.  Often  Georgina  and  I  had  tea  in 
that  little  cottage  as  we  returned  from  our  expedi- 
tions up  the  stream.  I  had  no  misgiving  therefore 


"He  was  standing  by  his 
cottage  door." 

on  my  way  down  to  see  him.  I  knew  that  he  would 
listen  quietly  and  reasonably  to  all  I  had  to  say.  He 
was  standing  at  his  cottage  door,  for  the  day  was 
fine  and  the  sun  was  hot  as  I  came  up. 

"Good  morning,  Fastnedge,"  I  said  cheerfully. 
229 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

I  did  not  wish  him  to  think  that  I  was  concerned 
in  any  way. 

"Good  morning,  sur,"  he  replied,  but  he  made 
no  movement  for  me  to  step  inside.  I  understood. 
"He's  not  quite  proud  of  himself,"  thought  I, 
"that's  half  the  battle  fought  already." 

But  I  was  wrong  when  I  imagined  that,  for 
though,  when  I  said  I  wanted  a  talk  with  him,  he 
suggested  we  should  sit  together  on  the  weir  by 
the  side  of  the  water,  it  was  not  really  that  he  was 
ashamed  to  ask  me  within.  I  shall  try  to  put  down 
exactly  what  we  said. 

I  informed  him  I  was  not  going  to  beat  about 
the  bush.  I  told  him  then  what  I  had  heard. 

"That's  true  enough,"  said  he.  "I've  been  ex- 
pecting 'ee  round  this  way  for  the  last  two  days." 

"Well,  Fastnedge,"  I  replied,  "you  can't  per- 
sist in  this.  You  can't  go  on  living  here  with  Mrs. 
Fuel,  just  as  if  you  were  married." 

"Why  not,  sur?"  he  asked. 

"Well — plainly,"  said  I,  "because  it  would  be  a 
scandal  in  the  village." 

"Do  'ee  know  how  old  I  be  ?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,"  said  I,  "you're  exactly  seventy-five  or 
thereabouts." 

230 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Do  'ee  know  how  old  she  be?" 

"I've  heard  she's  about  seventy." 

"Well?"  said  he,  and  he  planted  out  his  stick, 
firmly  on  the  ground  at  arm's  length  and  he  looked 
me  honestly  in  the  face. 

"Yes — I  know  all  that,"  said  I,  "but  you  must 
remember,  Fastnedge,  that  marriage  is  a  sacrament 
without  which  no  two  people  can  be  joined  to- 
gether. To  ignore  it,  to  avoid  it,  is  to  live  in  sin." 

"Would  'ee  mind  tellin'  me,  sur,"  he  replied, 
"what  sin  there  be  left  in  the  world  for  an  old  man 
of  seventy-five  and  an  old  woman  of  seventy  to 
do?  They  do  say  as  how  one  goes  back  to  second 
childhood  when  'ee  be  my  age.  And  indeedie  with 
my  rheumatiz  I  might  be  a  babe  in  arms.  What 
sin  is  there  in  two  old  folks  like  us  comin'  together 
for  company  so  as  we  mayn't  die  lonesome  like  ?" 

The  picture  of  these  two  which  those  simple 
words  brought  to  my  mind  was  such,  that  for  the 
moment  I  could  not  answer  him  in  justice  to  myself. 
Children  indeed  they  were  and,  as  when  they  are 
little,  we  have  no  thought  to  see  our  children  sleep- 
ing side  by  side  for  company  through  the  night,  so 
why  should  there  be  any  shame  to  these  two  old 
people?  When  he  spoke  of  dying  lonesome,  I  could 
16  231 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

imagine  them  side  by  side  in  the  bed  which  Fast- 
nedge  has  slept  in  for  so  long  alone — in  which  I 
have  seen  him  so  many  times  bearing  the  pains  of 
all  he  suffers  without  comfort  or  complaint — and 
I  could  not  but  feel  that  there  was  no  sin  in  such 
a  simple  union. 

"Do  you  object  to  being  married  then,  Fast- 
nedge  ?"  I  asked  at  length. 

"No,  sur,"  said  he,  "  'tisn't  as  if  I  object  I 
reads  my  Bible  just  the  same  as  ever  I  did  and  I 
reads  how  St.  Paul  said,  it's  better  not  to  be  mar- 
ried, same  as  he  was,  but  that  if  a  man  can't  abide 
it  so  to  speak  then  he  might  as  well  be  married 
rather 'n  be  burnt.  But  what's  that  got  to  do  wi* 
me,  sur,  now?  There's  no  call  for  to  burn  me — 
my  old  bones  wouldn't  make  much  of  a  bonfire  for 
no  one.  No,  sur,  I  don't  object,  but  it  seems  to  me, 
what's  the  good.  T-a  'gin  with,  look  you,  I  can't 
afford  it,  and  then  it  ain't  goin'  to  make  no  better 
o'  us,  'cos  there  ain't  no  bad  in  us.  We're  a  pair 
of  old  children,  sur,  that's  what  it  comes  to  and 
wouldn't  you  pop  your  bairns  in  a  bed  and  not 
think  one  way  or  t'other  about  it?" 

He  stopped  a  moment  and  looked  at  me  squarely 
again.  Then  he  pulled  off  the  seeded  head  of  a 

232 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

dandelion  and,  putting  it  up  to  his  lips,  he  blew  it 
into  the  wind.  I  could  not  help  thinking  what  a 
child  indeed  he  was. 

"You  see,  sur,"  he  went  on,  "if  we  two  were  to 
go  up  to  the  church  together  we  should  have  the 
whole  village  on  our  heels  laughing  at  us — and 
though,  mind  you,  I'd  laugh  wi'  'em,  'cos  I'd  know 
what  a  fool  I'd  look,  yet  I'm  sure  she'd  feel  it  a  bit. 
She'd  set  her  cap  straight  now,  look  you,  if  you 
was  to  step  inside — 'cos  as  I  sees  it  a  woman  dies  a 
woman.  There's  no  making  no  child  out  of  her." 

There  was  so  much  truth  in  all  he  said  and  yet, 
convention,  I  suppose  it  was,  made  me  feel  it  my 
bounden  duty  to  press  my  point. 

"So  far  as  the  matter  of  money  goes,  Fastnedge," 
said  I,  "let  me  make  you  a  wedding  present." 

"What's  that,  sur?" 

"Let  me  marry  you  for  nothing." 

He  sat  there  in  silence  for  a  long  while,  then  with 
difficulty  he  helped  himself  to  his  feet. 

"I'll  go  and  ask  her,"  said  he,  and  I  went  away 
not  altogether  happy  in  my  mind.  It  seemed  to  me 
he  had  a  broader  view  of  life  than  have  I. 


'  / 

/^  OY  must  be  in  the  heart  of  praise. .  I 
would  preach  happiness  before  I  thought 
of  cleanliness  in  despite  of  any  proverb 
in  the  world. 

A  robin  was  killed  yesterday  in  the 
garden  by  the  cat  they  feed  in  the 
kitchen.  The  bird  was  sitting  on  her 
nest  and  the  mother  instinct,  I  suppose 
it  was,  bid  her  stay  there  in  defence  of  her  young. 
So  the  cat  caught  her.  We  found  the  nest  scat- 
tered across  the  grass,  the  young  fledglings  dead 
in  the  midst  of  it  and  only  a  few  grey  feathers  were 
all  that  remained  of  the  mother. 

I  have  kept  the  news  of  it  successfully  from 
Diana  and  now  I  see  the  male  bird  moping  out  his 
heart  on  the  hedge  near  by  where  the  nest  was  built 
— for  he  helped,  too,  in  the  building  of  it.  He  is 
sitting  there  with  his  head  a  little  on  one  side, 
silent  and  songless.  It  is  almost  heart-rending  to 
watch  him.  Death  is  never  so  cruel  as  life  can 
sometimes  be. 

He  will  get  over  it,  I  know.     If  he  lives  until 
237 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

next  Spring,  perhaps  even  before  this  Summer  is 
out,  he  will  choose  another  mate  and  sing  his  songs 
again.  But  now  all  joy  has  left  him.  He  cannot 
praise  the  day.  What  folly  it  is  to  say  birds  do  not 
suffer ! 

When  I  thought  of  this,  I  chose  the  sixty-third 
Psalm  to  read  before  prayers  this  morning.  I  had 
given  it  out  and  was  waiting  for  them  to  find  their 
places  when  I  looked  up  and  saw  that  Rachel,  the 
cook,  was  not  there. 

I  asked  Alice,  the  housemaid,  where  she  was. 
She  told  me  that  Rachel  was  cleaning  out  my  study. 

"Tell  her  that  we  are  ready  for  prayers,"  said  I. 

Alice  looked  uncomfortable  and  she  glanced  at 
Diana. 

"What's  the  matter?"  I  asked. 

"I  told  her  it  was  prayers,  sir,"  said  Alice,  "and 
she  said  she  was  not  coming  in." 

"Why  not?" 

"Said  she'd  got  her  work  to  do,  sir." 

"Go  out,"  said  I,  "at  once  and  tell  her  we're 
waiting." 

As  soon  as  the  door  had  closed,  Diana  looked 
up  at  me. 

"She  won't  come,  Daddy,"  she  remarked. 
238 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"But  she  must,"  I  replied,  "I  won't  have  any 
servant  in  my  house  staying  away  from  prayers." 
And  then  I  am  afraid  that  pride  must  in  some  way 


"  'Said  she'd  got  her  work 
to  do,  sir.'" 

have  blinded  my  proper  sense  of  vision.  I  felt 
more  annoyed  at  being  disobeyed,  than  grieved  at 
Rachel's  behaviour.  As  Diana  put  it  to  me  after- 
wards, I  lost  my  sense  of  humour. 

I  have  never  heard  so  much  importance  given  to 
this  sense  of  humour  as  lately,  since  Diana  came 

239 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

back  from  school,  but  am  now  beginning  to  believe 
that  there  is  something  in  it.  It  even  seems  to  me 
sometimes  that  God  himself  must  appreciate  it  and 
indeed  must  feel  the  want  of  it  in  many. 

Perhaps  I  did  lose  my  sense  of  humour  then, 
for  when  Alice  returned  and  said  that  Rachel  still 
refused  to  come  and  was  persisting  in  cleaning 
out  my  study,  I  felt  my  cheeks  get  hot  and  I  de- 
clared that  Rachel  would  have  to  find  another 
situation. 

"Well,  read  prayers  now,  Daddy,"  said  Diana 
quietly.  "We  can  talk  about  that  after  breakfast." 

With  my  cheeks  still  burning  then  I  changed  the 
reading  I  had  chosen. 

"I  will  not  read  the  sixty-third  Psalm,"  said  I. 
"You  can  turn  instead  to  the  second  chapter  of 
the  Epistle  of  Peter — beginning  at  the  eleventh 
verse." 

When  the  rustle  of  the  leaves  of  their  Bibles  was 
silent,  I  began  and  as  I  came  to  the  eighteenth 
verse,  "Servants,  be  subject  to  your  masters  with 
all  fear;  not  only  to  the  good  and  gentle,  but  also 
to  the  froward,"  I  looked  up  to  make  sure  that 
Alice  was  listening  or  following  the  words  and 
then  I  caught  sight  of  Diana's  face.  Her  head  was 

240 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

bent  rather  lower  than  usual  over  her  book.  I 
could  not  see  her  eyes,  but  I  knew  from  the  ex- 
pression of  her  lips  that  they  were  twinkling.  I 
don't  know  why  exactly,  but  I  wished  then  that 
I  had  continued  with  the  sixty-third  Psalm. 

After  prayers  were  over,  we  began  breakfast  in 
silence,  which  Diana  was  the  first  to  break  as  she 
passed  me  my  tea. 

"You're  not  going  to  send  Rachel  away,  Daddy," 
she  said  quietly. 

"I  certainly  shall,"  said  I. 

Somehow  or  other  I  felt  that  my  case  was  a  poor 
one.  I  knew  that  somewhere  I  was  in  the  wrong, 
but  pride  would  give  me  no  license  to  admit  it. 

"No,  you  won't,"  she  repeated.  "You  don't  un- 
derstand yet." 

"What  is  there  to  understand?"  I  demanded. 
"Rachel  refuses  to  come  in  to  prayers — and  it  is  a 
condition  I  enforce  amongst  my  servants  in  this 
household,  as  indeed  should  be  enforced  in  every 
household,  that  they  should  attend  prayers." 

Never  a  smile  passed  across  Diana's  face,  yet  it 
annoyed  me  the  more  because  I  knew  she  wanted  to. 

"You'd  better  hear  what's  happened  first,"  said 
she  gently.  How  like  Georgina  she  was  then!  It 

241 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

recalled  the  many  times  to  my  mind  when  the  gentle 
answers  of  Georgina  had  turned  away  my  wrath. 
But  I  was  not  ready  for  it  to  be  turned  away  just 
then.  I  suppose  I  thought  it  maintained  my  dignity 
for  me.  What  poor  creatures  we  are! 

"What  has  happened?"  I  asked. 

"Well,"  she  replied,  "for  the  last  few  months 
Rachel  has  had  a  young  man.  She's  been  walking 
out  with  him  and  I  believe  had  every  intention  of 
marrying  him.  Now  he's  transferred  his  affections 
to  Alice.  They  fell  out  over  it  rather  badly  at 
first — I'm  not  surprised — but  I  think  she  and  Alice 
are  friends  again  now.  Rachel  realises  that  it  can't 
be  helped,  but  that  doesn't  make  her  any  the  less 
miserable.  And  last  evening  he  gave  Alice  a  ring. 
I  don't  wonder  she  wants  to  work." 

I  looked  out  of  the  window.  There  was  the  robin 
still  sitting  songless  where  his  nest  had  been.  With 
my  mind  accusing  me  of  all  my  folly,  I  came  across 
to  Diana  and  laid  my  hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"Your  father's  a  fool,  my  dear,"  said  I. 

"My  father's  a  dear,  my  dear,"  said  she. 

Oh,  yes,  joy  must  be  in  the  heart  of  praise.  I 
would  preach  happiness  before  I  thought  of  cleanli- 
ness. I  would  much  sooner  that  my  study  were 
untidy  and  undusted.  Happiness  is  better  than  that. 

242 


JULY   21 


HE  swallow  that  builds  every  year 
in  our  potting  shed  has  just  brought 
forth  her  brood  the  beginning  of 
this  week.  Diana  called  me  round 
to  see  the  four  bald  heads  peering 
over  the  edge  of  the  nest.  She 
gets  used  to  our  visits  after  a  while 
and  flies  in  to  feed  her  young,  well 
knowing,  I  suppose,  by  this  that  we 
are  friends.  She  comes  in  by  the 
door  or  the  window  whenever  they  are  open ;  when 
they  are  closed,  she  enters  through  any  one  of  the 
four  small  square  holes  over  the  door  which  I  ex- 
pect were  cut  in  the  boarding  to  afford  ventilation. 
Sometimes  I  find  myself  stopping  in  my  work 
as  I  sit  in  my  study  to  watch  the  marvellous  speed 
and  accuracy  with  which  she  effects  her  entrances 
and  exits  through  those  tiny  apertures.  Until  the 
very  moment  it  seems  when  she  reaches  her  narrow 
doorway,  her  wings  are  beating  fast  and  not  one 
whit  in  her  pace  is  slackened.  Then  her  wings  fall 
together  and  through  she  goes — a  twinkle  of  light 

245 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

on  her  breast  as  she  half  turns  to  get  through  and 
she  is  gone.  Barely  one  instant  and  she  is  out 
again ;  in  that  moment  her  children  have  been  fed. 
If  I  were  satisfied  with  watching  one  of  these 
visits,  it  might  not  be  a  waste  of  time,  but  in- 
voluntarily I  find  myself  waiting  the  two  minutes 
— it  is  not  more — until  she  returns  once  more.  In 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

those  two  minutes  she  has  been  many  times  round 
the  meadow  and  up  and  down  the  stream,  never 
resting,  never  still,  doubtless  mindful  all  the  time 
of  those  four  craning  heads  with  mouths  always 
open  to  be  filled. 

It  is  a  busy,  an  untiring  life.  From  early  morn- 
ing until  the  sun  has  dropped  before  the  pale  grey 
twilight,  she  ceaselessly  pursues  these  brilliant 
flights,  now  high  up  in  the  heavens,  now  skimming 
the  water  down  the  stream.  I  have  wished  often 
I  were  as  diligent  as  she.  And  then,  not  content 
with  the  cares  and  troubles  of  raising  one  brood, 
she  is  ready  to  undertake  another  as  soon  as  the 
first  family  can  fly. 

Sometimes  this  is  as  late  as  August  or  even  the 
beginning  of  September  and  then  I  have  known  the 
young  to  be  left  behind,  so  deep,  so  strong  is  that 
instinct  of  migration. 

I  have  often  thought  about  this,  wondering  why 
a  bird  that  shows  such  devotion  to  its  young 
throughout  the  whole  summer,  should  lose  all  that 
devotion  to  such  a  call  as  this,  leaving  its  children 
which  it  has  striven  so  patiently  and  so  affectionately 
to  rear,  that  it  may  start  upon  its  hazardous  journey 
to  the  south.  Hundreds  of  swallows  die  every  year 
n  247 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

in  that  process  of  migration.  On  the  south  coast  of 
France  and  on  the  northern  coast  of  Africa 
numbers  of  them  every  year  are  found  washed  up 
by  the  sea.  Yet  once  the  northeast  wind  has  sung 
its  song  around  the  house  there  is  no  interest  can 
hold  them.  The  word  is  sent  forth.  They  collect 
in  their  numbers  upon  the  telegraph  wires,  looking 
like  crotchets  on  a  stave  and  then,  after  some  chat- 
tering and  commotion,  they  are  gone.  When  once 
that  has  happened,  instinctively  I  find  my  mind 
turning  from  the  old  year,  inevitably  looking  al- 
ready towards  the  new. 

We  had  often  watched  this  swallow,  Diana  and 
I,  for,  by  reason  of  its  yearly  visits  to  the  potting 
shed,  it  has  become  a  looked-for  friend. 

It  was  on  the  I5th  of  April  this  year,  that  she 
burst  into  my  study  and  exclaimed: 

"Who  do  you  think  has  come?" 

"Come  where?"  said  I. 

"Here!" 

"To  call  do  you  mean  ?" 

"No — to  stay." 

"My  dear  child,"  said  I  in  some  nervousness,  "I 
hope  the  spare  room  is  ready." 

"Oh — yes — it's  ready,"  she  replied  laughing. 
248 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"Well— who  is  it?"  I  asked.  "Surely  it's  not 
your  Aunt  Edith  ?" 

She  turned  my  head  towards  the  window  and  bid 
me  look  out  and  then  I  guessed  and  knew  the  days 
of  waiting  were  all  over.  I  am  afraid  I  count  my 
year  by  the  birds.  That  is  why  I  am  so  fond  of 
the  robin.  He  keeps  in  song  when  all  the  rest  are 
silent.  The  winter  would  be  voiceless  but  for  him. 

We  stayed  for  ten  minutes  this  morning  watching 
this  swallow  come  in  and  out  to  feed  her  young.  I 
remarked  upon  her  untiring  industry  and  then  it 
occurred  to  me  again  how  strong  the  instinct  of 
migration  must  be,  from  which  my  mind  turned, 
I  cannot  say  how  or  why,  to  a  thought  of  Diana's 
poetry. 

"Have  you  written  any  more  verses,  my  dear," 
I  asked  her,  "since  those  'Between  the  May  and  the 
Rose?'" 

She  continued  looking  up  at  the  nest. 

"That  little  beggar'll  fall  out  if  he's  not  careful," 
said  she. 

"Have  you?"  I  repeated. 

"Why  do  you  ask?" 

I  knew  then  that  she  had,  but  was  too  reticent  to 
tell  me.  I  did  not  press  the  matter  further,  because 

249 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

that  was  not  the  point  which  I  was  at.  I  wanted  to 
suggest  to  her  that  she  should  write  something  on 
the  migration  of  the  swallow.  If  I  could  write 
verse,  this  would  be  just  such  a  theme  as  I  should 
certainly  choose  myself.  But  I  do  not  think  I  could 
write  two  lines  of  poetry,  so  I  proposed  it  to  her. 

She  looked  at  me  very  intently  for  a  minute  and 
then,  as  though  the  inspiration  had  suddenly  come 
to  her  she  said,  "I'll  go  and  do  it  now,  Daddy.  I'll 

write  it  specially  for  you "  and  she  went  off 

into  the  house  singing  with  that  strong,  young  voice 
of  hers,  her  head  thrown  back,  her  body  swinging 
to  every  step.  She  is  another  songster  whom  the 
winter  cannot  silence.  I  wonder,  sometimes  in  fear, 
if  she  may  not  prove  migratory,  too. 

This  afternoon  at  tea,  she  brought  her  verses  to 
me.  I  transcribe  them  into  this  note-book  with 
more  right  than  I  did  the  last.  These  are  my  very 
own. 

"You  can  hear  the  South  Winds  calling, 
And  the  swallow  hears  them,  too — 
'Cross  the  hills  and  down  the  heather 
There  they  ride  and  who  cares  whether 
North  and  East  winds  ride  together, 
For  the  South  Wind's  calling  you. 

250 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

You  can  hear  the  South  Winds  whisp'ring, 

And  the  swallow  hears  them,  too — 

All  the  heather  bells  are  dinging 

To  the  magic  of  their  ringing 

And  your  heart  is  up  and  singing 

For  the  South  Wind's  calling  you. 

You  can  hear  the  South  Winds  saying, 
And  the  swallow  hears  them,  too — 
That  the  world  is  full  of  wonder 
All  the  burning  blue  skies  under; 
Yet  you  break  your  lives  asunder, 
Though  the  South  Wind's  calling  you. 

Am  I  really  to  believe  that  this  was  specially 
written  for  me  ? 


JULY  29 


HE  process  of  education  and 
enlightenment  is  going  on 
apace.  This  morning  our  swallow 
took  her  brood  out  onto  the  branch 
of  a  willow  tree  and  there  fed  them  in  the 
sunshine.  They  sat  close  together  in  a  row, 
like  children  on  a  form  in  school,  none  too 
certain  of  their  foothold.  It  was  a  lesson  in 
balancing,  which  it  seems  they  all  learnt 
without  mishap.  How  she  got  them  there 
is  more  than  I  can  understand.  I  only  wish 
I  had  been  present  to  watch  the  proceedings,  for 
they  cannot  fly;  at  least,  none  of  them  have  at- 
tempted to  do  so  all  this  morning. 

In  the  intervals  of  feeding  them,  she  still  flies  in 
and  out  of  the  potting  shed.  I  suppose  she  is  put- 
ting her  house  in  order  for  the  new  brood,  that  is 
to  come.  There  cannot  be  so  much  to  do,  for  they 
are  cleanly  creatures  and  all  the  time  that  the  young 
are  fledging,  clean  out  the  nest  every  day  until,  as 
Alice  the  housemaid  would  say — it  is  as  bright  as 
a  new  pin.  After  a  time,  before  even  they  can  fly, 

255 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

the  young  birds  are  able  to  look  after  themselves.  I 
have  no  doubt  it  is  she  who  teaches  them  how  best 
they  may  perform  their  duties  of  the  day.  She  is  a 
careful  housewife. 


Apparently  some  part  of  the  nest  needs  mending 
for  I  see  her  now  gathering  mud  at  the  edge  of  our 
little  pond.  She  has  mixed  it  well  and  taken  it  into 
the  potting  shed. 

256 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

Now  she  comes  out  once  more  and  flies  back- 
wards and  forwards  across  the  water  dipping  again 
and  again,  breaking  the  surface  as  she  goes.  She 
is  taking  her  bath,  washing  away  the  remains  of  the 
mud  from  her  throat  with  which  she  does  all 
the  work  of  plastering.  What  a  cleanly  creature 
she  is! 

In  a  day  or  two  I  suppose  will  begin  the  lessons 
in  flying  and  that  is  a  perilous  business  for  the 
wings  of  the  young  swallows  are  almost  dispropor- 
tionate in  length.  If  once  they  fall  to  the  ground, 
like  the  full-grown  swift,  they  cannot  rise  again. 

I  have  told  Diana  and  we  are  both  determined  to 
keep  a  good  watch  against  such  accidents  when  once 
the  lessons  begin.  I  hinted  to  her  that  the  kitchen 
cat  was  fond  of  catching  birds,  but  told  her  nothing 
of  the  robin. 

"I  suppose  they  must  learn  to  fly,"  said  she; 
"they  must  migrate.  Why  can't  they  stay  on  in 
England?  We  could  heat  the  potting  shed.  They 
wouldn't  find  it  cold  then." 

I  laughed  at  her  simplicity  and  then  answered 
her  with  her  very  own  words. 

"  'You  can  hear  the  South  Winds  calling',"  said 
I,  "  'And  the  swallow  hears  them,  too'." 

257 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

She  took  my  arm  tightly  in  hers. 

"I  don't  hear  them,  Daddy,"  she  replied  very 
firmly — so  firmly  that  I  looked  at  her  and  wondered 
what  she  meant. 


AUGUST  2 


STAND  accused  of  my  own  narrow- 
mindedness.  A  thing  has  happened 
for  which  I  think  I  would  have 
thrown  all  convention  upon  one  side 
to  have  avoided.  The  laws  of  fate 
are  greater  than  the  laws  of  man. 
That  is  all  I  can  find  to  say  when  I 
look  back  upon  it  from  the  beginning. 
I  would  not  preach  such  sentiments 
as  these  in  any  pulpit.  It  is  so  easy 
there  to  be  misunderstood.  But  here 
in  my  note-book  and  to  myself,  I  say 
again — the  laws  of  fate  are  greater  than  the  laws 
of  man. 

Fastnedge,  who  lives  down  at  the  mill,  more  I  am 
sure  to  gratify  me  than  from  any  wish  of  it  him- 
self, consented  to  be  married.  For  three  Sundays, 
I  read  the  banns  and  the  first  time,  thinking  I  saw 
a  smile  on  Suskind's  face,  I  looked  at  him  sternly 
as  I  concluded  my  reading.  The  next  Sunday  at 
evening  service,  seeing  that  neither  Fastnedge  nor 
Mrs.  Fuel  were  there,  I  spoke  in  my  service  of  the 

261 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

honour  due  to  those  who  observed  the  rites  of  the 
Church. 

"It  is  becoming  the  habit  of  many,"  said  I,  "to 
take  a  pride  in  thinking  for  themselves — but  there 
is  a  discipline  of  mind  as  well  as  of  body.  We  can- 
not all  take  the  wheel ;  we  cannot  all  steer  the  ship. 
There  must  be  one  to  command  while  there  are 
many  to  obey  and  obedience  can  be  as  great  a  virtue 
as  authority." 

When  I  read  the  banns  for  the  last  time,  Sus- 
kind's  face  was  as  solemn  as  a  judge. 

Now  they  are  married  and  retribution  has  fallen 
upon  me.  All  that  I  said  to  Fastnedge,  all  that  I 
said  in  my  sermon  comes  back  to  make  me  feel 
ashamed.  What  sin  indeed  could  there  have  been 
for  them,  I  ask  myself.  Why  did  I  not  leave  them 
like  children  as  they  were  ? 

On  the  day  that  they  were  married,  Spencer,  the 
man  who  looks  after  the  church,  did  not  think  it 
necessary  to  light  the  fire,  heating  the  water  in  the 
pipes  that  run  down  the  chancel.  I  did  not  even 
think  to  tell  him  to  do  it  myself.  Certainly  it  was 
colder  than  we  had  expected.  An  east  wind  got  up 
in  the  night  and  was  still  blowing  in  gusts,  rattling 
the  windows  of  the  vicarage  all  that  morning. 

262 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

At  eleven  o'clock  I  had  to  drive  over  to  Morton 
to  see  a  builder  about  some  parochial  matter.  I 
thought  as  I  came  back  how  cold  it  was  and,  look- 
ing at  my  watch,  when  I  was  still  some  three  miles 
from  Bramlingham,  I  found  that  it  wanted  half  an 
hour  to  the  moment  when  I  was  due  at  the  church 
for  the  wedding.  Making  all  the  speed  I  could,  I 
was  still  a  quarter  of  an  hour  late  and  found  the 
two  old  people  there  waiting  for  me. 

We  had  kept  the  day  of  the  wedding  a  secret,  so 
that  there  was  no  one  to  laugh  at  them  as  they  came 
away,  and  when  the  service  was  over,  they  went  off 
arm  in  arm,  she  leaning  on  him  on  one  side,  he 
leaning  on  his  stick  on  the  other.  I  smiled  then  at 
the  pleasure  that  it  gave  me  to  see  them  man  and 
wife.  It  flattered  my  vanity  I  suppose  to  think  I 
had  got  my  way. 

I  remember  what  Diana  said  to  me  that  day  at 
lunch. 

"I  wonder  if  they'll  be  any  happier  now,"  she 
said. 

I  remember  my  reply. 

"How  could  they  fail  to  be?"  said  I. 

Now  all  these  things  come  back  to  me.  In  that 
cold  church,  perhaps  in  those  very  moments  while 

18  263 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

they  waited  for  my  arrival,  Mrs.  Fastnedge  caught 
a  chill.  In  a  few  days  it  had  developed  to  pneu- 
monia, and  two  days  later  than  that,  she  died.  It 


was  almost  too  swift  and  sudden  to  believe.  For  a 
whole  day  the  poor  old  man  sat  beside  the  bed, 
staring  at  her,  unable  to  realise  the  truth. 

I  went  down  to  see  him  and  for  a  long  while  he 
sat  there  saying  nothing ;  then  at  last  he  looked  up 
at  me  and  he  said,  "She  were  such  a  child,  surr — 
that's  what  beats  me." 

264 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

I  do  not  think  he  even  meant  it  in  reproach,  yet 
it  came  home  to  me  more  than  anything  else  he 
could  have  said.  She  was  such  a  child — why  could 
I  not  have  left  her  so? 

The  laws  of  fate  are  greater  than  the  laws  of 
man.  That  is  all  I  can  say. 


AUGUST  4 


'AST  evening  Allan  Tregenna  brought 
round  an  old  book  on  birds,  pub- 
lished in  1743,  which  he  had  found 
amongst  the  volumes  in  his  father's 
study.  It  was  greatly  interesting  in 
that  it  showed  me  how  much  was 
known  of  our  British  birds  before 
Gilbert  White  wrote  his  famous  let- 
ters from  Selbourne.  There  was 
not  much  in  it  that  was  accurate, 
but  a  great  deal  that  was  fanciful.  The  author  was 
prone  to  the  superstitions  of  those  days.  He  speaks 
quite  seriously  in  a  chapter  on  bees  of  the  effect 
upon  them  brought  about  by  the  death  of  their 
owner,  and  is  assured  in  such  a  case  that  the  death 
of  the  whole  hive  is  bound  to  follow.  He  did  not 
go  so  far  as  to  advocate  the  message  being  con- 
veyed to  them  that  their  owner  was  dead  or  that 
they  would  in  future  have  to  work  for  some  one 
else.  J  think,  however,  that  this  is  mentioned  in  a 
letter  of  Gilbert  White's  upon  the  superstitions  of 
Selbourne. 

269 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

When  I  thought  how  soon  young  Allan  would 
be  gone  away  to  his  uncle's  farm  in  California,  and 
despite  the  fear  of  all  I  had  imagined  when  he  was 
with  us  last  time,  I  asked  him  to  stay  on  for  our 
high  tea.  It  needed  no  pressure  to  persuade  him. 
After  this  meal,  which  in  the  summer  months  we 
have  at  eight  in  order  to  prolong  the  evening,  we 
sat  out  with  Diana  in  the  garden  talking  of  his 
future,  of  many  things  beside. 

The  candles  in  the  drawing-room  had  been 
lighted  and  the  number  of  moths  drawn  towards 
the  glow  was  astonishing.  I  do  not  think  I  have 
ever  seen  so  many  or  such  a  variety  before.  Diana 
closed  the  window  so  that  they  could  not  fly  into 
the  room  drawn  towards  their  own  destruction. 
We  sat  there  watching  them  as  they  beat  in  vain 
against  the  glass. 

It  occurred  to  me  at  last  what  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity it  was  to  make  some  observations,  and  I 
went  into  the  house  to  get  my  jar  of  rum  and 
treacle,  which  every  Spring  I  have  prepared  and 
corked  down  in  readiness  for  just  such  an  occasion 
as  this. 

They  still  sat  there  under  the  mulberry  tree  while 
I  went  round  with  my  pot  and  brush  to  all  the  trees 

270 


t       lULJUL 

'" 


Diana  and  Allan 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

in  the  garden.  This  painting  of  the  bark  is  a  sim- 
ple method  of  baiting  and  does  no  harm  to  the 
moth.  To  the  smell  of  the  spirit  it  comes  very 
swiftly;  then  from  the  stupor  from  the  rum  and 
the  stickiness  of  the  treacle  it  remains  upon  the  tree 
an  excellent  object  for  observation.  To  set  it  free 
is  the  work  of  a  moment.  I  have  often  taken  them 
into  the  house  with  me  and  have  found  them  re- 
cover from  the  effects  of  the  alcohol  in  a  very  short 
time. 

These  expeditions  always  bring  back  to  me  the 
days  when  I  was  a  boy  at  school.  I  experience  the 
same  sensations  of  excitement  as  I  approach  each 
tree  to  see  what  fortune  is  in  store  for  me.  Diana 
has  but  little  sympathy  with  it,  though  I  have  as- 
sured her  there  is  no  cruelty  in  the  process.  It  was 
for  this  reason  that  last  evening  I  went  alone. 

As  I  had  anticipated,  the  result  was  most  satis- 
factory. I  found  moths  upon  every  patch  of  bark 
I  had  painted.  On  some  of  the  trees,  there  were  as 
many  as  a  dozen  clinging  to  the  same  place.  Of 
tiger  moths  and  yellow-under  wings  there  must  have 
been  a  score.  Three  humming-bird  hawk-moths  I 
counted.  These  creatures  I  have  a  great  affection 
for.  They  fly  mostly  by  day  as  well  as  night  and 

273 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

true  to  the  name  that  has  been  given  them,  their 
flight  is  much  more  like  that  of  a  bird  than  an  in- 
sect. I  always  stop  to  watch  them  in  the  garden 
when,  with  that  invisible  movement  of  their  wings 
— it  is  so  swift — they  visit  nearly  all  the  flowers  we 
grow.  Over  the  blossoms  of  the  honeysuckle  and 
the  lilac,  they  hover  like  any  bird.  I  set  them  all 
free,  putting  them  in  some  safe  place  where  they 
might  recover  from  their  torpor.  One  interesting 
fact  about  these  moths  is  that  you  may  see  them  at 
almost  any  time  of  the  year.  The  imagines  appear 
in  August  or  September  and  hibernate  all  the  win- 
ter through.  Any  warm  day  will  bring  them  out, 
and  I  have  seen  them  upon  the  wing  in  December 
and  January,  on  one  of  those  days  when  a  blue  sky 
and  a  bright  sun  deceive  you  and  them  into  the 
belief  that  the  Spring  is  close  at  hand. 

One  moth  I  discovered  on  my  treacle  patches  last 
evening  which  is  new  to  me.  The  fore  wings  were 
pale  reddish  brown,  dusted  with  white  in  the  centre. 
The  hind  wings  were  white  or  grey,  dusted  with 
pale  brown.  I  think  it  must  be  the  pebble-promi- 
nent moth.  In  any  case  it  is  a  new  species  to  me. 

I  found  it  on  an  espalier  apple  tree  in  the  kitchen 
garden,  and  it  was  while  examining  it  that  I  heard 

274 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

the  voices  of  Diana  and  young  Allan.  They  had 
left  their  seat  under  the  mulberry  tree  and  were 
walking  up  and  down  the  path  between  the  currant 
bushes.  There  is  the  border  where  we  grow  our 
flowers  for  cutting,  our  stocks  and  mignonette,  our 
red  and  white  cloves  and  our  cabbage  roses.  On  a 
still  summer  evening,  the  air  is  laden  with  the  scent 
of  them.  It  brought  back  to  my  mind  the  days 
when  Georgina  and  I  had  walked  up  and  down  the 
paths  of  the  garden  at  their  house ;  how  Acres,  the 
gardener,  would  rest  upon  his  spade  and  talk  to  us 
until  we  heartily  wished  he  would  have  the  sense 
to  know  that  we  would  sooner  be  alone,  yet  had  not 
the  courage  to  interrupt  his  talk  and  leave  him. 

I  would  not  have  joined  them  then  and  made  a 
third,  for  all  that  I  could  see,  yet  perhaps  it  was 
curiosity — but  not  of  an  idle  nature  I  would  swear 
— that  made  me  strain  my  ears  to  listen  as  I  heard 
the  sound  of  Allan's  voice.  If  this  was  eavesdrop- 
ping, still,  I  excuse  myself  without  hesitation. 
There  was  no  suspicion  in  my  mind  as  I  listened, 
only  that  anxiety  which  surely  every  father  must 
feel  for  his  only  child.  It  was  her  happiness  I  de- 
sired before  any  thought  or  consideration  of  my 
own.  It  was  for  the  sound  of  her  happiness  I 

275 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

listened  and,  with  the  first  words  of  his  that  reached 
my  ears,  I  knew  that  happiness  it  was  of  which 
they  talked. 


"At  least  you'll  let  me  speak  to  your  father,"  said 
he. 

The  beating  of  my  heart  seemed  to  wait  for  her 
answer. 

"It's  no  good,  my  dear,"  said  she — and  in  her 
276 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

voice  I  heard  Georgina  speaking  across  the  thin  veil 
that  separates  us  now.  "You  mustn't  say  a  word 
to  him.  It's  I  who  say  it  can't  be,  and  you  wonder 
how  I  can  care  when  I  say  it.  But  just  be  him  for 
a  moment  and  think.  He's  been  everything  to  me. 
When  Mother  died,  I  suppose  I  became  everything 
to  him.  Now  think  what  it  would  be  if  I  went 
away  all  those  thousands  of  miles  and  he  was  left 
here — alone." 

"Must  the  young  live  for  the  old?"  said  Allan. 

Nearly  I  cried  out — "No !"  It  was  the  true,  the 
honest  thing  to  say.  I  felt  no  thought  against  him 
in  my  heart  as  I  heard  the  words.  I  should  have 
said  them  myself  in  such  a  case.  Yet  apprehension, 
eagerness,  I  suppose  if  I  were  honest  I  should  call 
it  hope,  all  crowded  into  my  mind  as  I  listened  for 
her  reply. 

"I  don't  know  how  to  answer  that,"  she  said, 
after  a  long  pause.  "Perhaps  they  shouldn't.  One 
is  only  young  once  I  know  and  you  could  go  on 
talking  of  the  rights  of  youth  till  you  were  tired. 
But  there's  always  something  which  just  alters  your 
own  case  and  puts  it  outside  the  general  rule.  First 
and  perhaps  biggest  of  all,  I  promised  Daddy,  soon 
after  Mother  died,  I  promised  him  I'd  never  leave 

277 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

him.  That  was  a  promise  made  very  solemnly  in  a 
very  solemn  moment.  How  could  I  break  it? 
Then  think  of  him  alone  here.  He's  lost  Mother — 
how  would  he  bear  it  if  he  had  to  lose  me?  I  can 
see  him,  just  as  he  was  after  Mother  died.  He 
loves  his  birds,  but  he  never  wrote  once  in  his  note- 
book for  nearly  a  whole  year.  He  used  to  go  and 
sit  in  the  room  where  Mother  died,  creep  up  there 
when  he  thought  I  didn't  know.  It  was  in  that 
room  I  promised  him.  And  I  know  just  what  he'd 
say  if  you  spoke  to  him.  He'd  never  stand  in  our 
way  for  a  moment.  He'd  let  me  go  right  away  to 
California  with  you  and  do  you  know  what  that 
would  be?" 

"No." 

"It  'ud  be  the  end  of  his  life— just  the  end  of  it." 

I  waited  for  his  answer,  but  he  seemingly  had 
no  word  to  say.  I  heard  their  footsteps  dying 
away  as  they  walked  out  of  the  kitchen  garden  on 
the  lawn  beyond. 

Then  I  set  free  my  little  moth  and  followed  them 
into  the  house. 


AUGUST  5 


19 


SAID  nothing  to  them  that  evening, 
but  when  Allan  was  going,  I  asked 
Diana  to  see  that  the  door  into  the 
hen-house  was  locked.  There  have 
been  foxes  in  our  neighbourhood 
lately  and  we  have  lost  some 
chickens  by  them.  I  thought  of  the 
hen-house  because  only  half  an 
hour  before  it  had  been  in  my  mind. 
I  had  gone  specially  to  lock  it  then 
myself.  So  they  went  together.  I 
knew  they  must  wish  to  say  good- 
night as  lovers  do.  I  knew,  too,  what 
a  moment  it  is  with  those  long  hours  of  the  night 
in  front  of  them  before  they  can  meet  again. 

It  took  her  twenty  minutes  to  see  whether  the 
hen-house  was  locked.  I  even  wonder  it  had  not 
taken  more.  And  while  she  was  gone,  I  sat  in  my 
study  and  thought  of  what  it  would  be  best  to  do. 
From  the  tone  of  her  voice  in  the  garden,  from  my 
knowledge  of  her  character  as  well,  I  knew  that 
Diana  would  be  faithful  to  her  promise.  No  per- 

281 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

suasion  of  mine  would  ever  have  been  strong 
enough  to  make  her  break  it;  no  assurance  of  mine 
would  ever  induce  in  her  the  belief  that  I  should  not 
be  lonely.  She  knows  me  too  well.  By  subterfuge 
and  strategy  alone  could  I  succeed  in  bringing  her 
to  her  happiness,  and  so  I  sat  there  then,  planning 
what  I  should  do. 

I  found  a  way  to  it  at  last. 

"In  such  a  case  as  this,"  said  I,  "deception  is  no 
deceit." 

It  was  at  that  moment,  Diana  opened  the  door 
of  my  study. 

"The  hen-house  was  locked,  Daddy,"  said  she, 
and  I  scarcely  heard  the  words.  My  mind  was  all 
attracted  to  a  lock  of  hair  that  had  slipped  loose 
upon  her  shoulder. 

"He's  kissed  her  hair,"  I  said  to  myself,  and 
when  I  bid  her  good-night  it  occurred  to  me  to  kiss 
it,  too. 


AUGUST  8 


'HE    swallows    have    learnt    to    fly 
against  the  day  of  their  migration. 
I  pointed  them  out  this  morning  to 
Diana  as  we  stood  on  the  lawn 
together   ready  to   go  to   church. 
They  were  chasing  each  other 
«^^/  with    short    uncertain    flights 

across  the  paddock,  returning 
every  moment  to  the  branch  of 
a  willow  hanging  over  the  little 
pond  on  which  the  mother  bird 
sat  in  readiness  to  help  them. 
Her  cream  white  breast  and  ruddy  throat  glit- 
tered in  the  sunshine.  Only  a  grebe's  feathers  it 
seems  to  me  are  more  silky  than  a  swallow's,  and  I 
know  of  no  bird  that  can  compare  with  the  gloss  of 
her  wing.  She  sat  singing  there  her  tireless  song, 
a  trilling  twitter  of  delight,  and  with  it  the  willow 
leaves  trembled  and  whispered  with  every  breath  of 
wind.  They  shivered  and  murmured  with  her  song 
— now  they  were  pale  green,  now  they  were  pale 

285 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

silver.     She  sat  there  on  her  branch  shining  like  a 
deep  blue  sapphire  in  a  glitter  of  light. 

"They're  ready  to  leave  us  now,"  said  I,  as  we 
watched  the  young  birds  come  back  to  their  branch. 

"I  wish  they  never  learnt  to  fly,"  said  Diana.  "I 
could  look  after  them  so  well  if  they  stayed  here." 

"Why  wish  to  alter  the  ways  of  life,  my  dear?" 
I  replied.  "Do  you  think  you  could  have  conceived 
them  with  greater  wisdom  than  as  they  are?  We 
must  all  go  forth  into  the  world;  we  all  have  our 
duties  to  do  and  our  better  instincts  to  obey.  I  re- 
gret it  as  much  as  any  when  the  swallows  go  away ; 
but  how  much  more  should  I  not  regret  it  if  in 
feebleness  they  had  failed  to  learn  to  fly  ?  I  might 
as  well  regret  that  you  are  young  and  strong.  I 
might  grudge  you  that  colour  in  your  cheeks — I 
might  as  well  wish  your  body  were  not  straight  or 
your  limbs  supple  as  wish  that  the  swallows  had 
never  learnt  to  fly." 

I  felt  then  that  I  was  drifting  into  my  sermon, 
before  even  I  had  got  to  church,  so,  taking  her  arm, 
I  led  her  away  out  of  the  garden. 

"You're  very  wise,  Daddy,"  said  she. 

"There  are  things  better  than  wisdom,"  said  I. 
"I  would  sooner  be  strong  to  fly." 

286 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

I  don't  know  whether  she  quite  knew  what  I 
meant  but,  casting  a  glance  at  her  as  she  walked 
beside  me,  I  saw  that  there  were  deep  thoughts  in 
her  mind. 

In  the  three  days  that  had  passed  since  their  con- 
versation which  I  had  overheard  in  the  garden,  I 
had  said  nothing.  I  had  done  nothing.  This  was 
Sunday  and  I  was  going  to  take  my  first  step  in  the 
.strategy  I  had  determined  to  pursue. 

I  had  made  sure  that  Allan  would  be  there  for 
morning  service,  and  when  I  got  up  into  the  pulpit 
I  gave  out  my  text  from  the  eleventh  chapter  of 
Ecclesiastes  and  the  ninth  verse: 

"Rejoice,  O  young  man,  in  thy  youth;  and  let 
thy  heart  cheer  thee  in  the  days  of  thy  youth  and 
walk  in  the  ways  of  thine  heart,  and  in  the  sight  of 
thine  eyes." 

I  am  almost  tempted  to  transcribe  the  whole  of 
my  sermon  here,  and  this,  merely,  I  suppose,  be- 
cause I  was  pleased  with  it.  It  had  been  a  pleasure, 
perhaps  a  bitter  pleasure  to  me  to  write  and  I  had 
taken  great  pains  with  it. 

There  is  something  poignant,  a  greater  depth  I 
sometimes  think,  in  pleasure  that  is  bitter.  For 
much  as  I  suffered  when  I  thought  what  the  result 

287 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

of  my  sermon  might  be,  yet  I  would  not  have  fore- 
gone that  suffering  for  a  world  of  pleasure  that 
was  sweet. 


I  will  not  transcribe  all  that  I  prepared  here.  I 
know  it  is  only  vanity  which  tempts  me  to  do  so, 
that  same  vanity  which  makes  me  dream  at  times 
of  a  day  when  I  might  contribute  something  to  the 
literature  of  my  country.  No  one  will  ever  see 
these  notes  and  so  I  can,  without  fear  of  misunder- 
standing, say  how  proud  I  should  be  even  to  see  a 

288 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

book  of  my  sermons  reach  the  dignity  of  print.  But 
this  is  idle  vanity,  too.  I  can  only  quiet  my  con- 
science with  the  thought  that  it  is  not  often  I  give 
way  to  it. 

After  I  had  made  some  reference  to  the  actual 
subject  of  the  text,  I  turned  into  the  wider  and 
truer  motive  of  my  discourse. 

"Energy,"  said  I,  "is  the  gift  of  God "  and 

this  I  transcribe,  just  as  I  had  written  it.  "It  is 
with  energy  a  man  obeys  the  word  of  God;  it  is 
in  sloth  and  laziness  that  he  disregards  it.  Now 
sloth  and  laziness,  these  are  subtle  things.  I  have 
known  the  most  noble  sacrifice  lead  to  idleness  and 
to  the  disregarding  of  the  highest  laws  of  God. 

"It  is  to  young  men  and  to  young  women  I  am 
speaking,  those  who,  in  their  youth,  have  all  that 
energy  which  is  meant  for  great  and  high  en- 
deavour." 

I  looked,  as  I  said  this,  at  young  Allan  and  from 
him  my  eyes  turned  to  Diana  in  the  choir.  The 
seeds  of  thought  were  already  planted  in  their 
minds.  I  knew  even  then  that  I  had  chosen  right, 
that  in  the  end  I  should  succeed.  He  was  steadily 
watching  me  from  the  pew  where  he  sat  and  her 
eyes  were  fixed  upon  a  distance  I  have  seen  so  often 

289 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

in  Diana's  face.  It  is  where  all  her  deepest  thoughts 
are  treasured. 

"Procrastination,"  I  went  on,  "that  is  the  sin  of 
the  youth  of  the  age;  indeed  perhaps  it  is  the  sin 
of  youth  in  every  age.  Yet  youth  is  the  time  for 
doing.  In  youth  you  give  your  energy  that  fresh 
energy  may  come  forth.  In  youth  are  your  chil- 
dren given  you  to  keep  alive  the  energy  that  was 
yours." 

"  'Rejoice,  0  young  man,  in  thy  youth;  .... 
and  walk  in  the  ways  of  thine  heart,  and  in  the 
sight  of  thine  eyes' 

"For  it  is  in  youth  that  the  heart  beats  strong 
that  the  sight  of  the  eyes  is  clear.  I  am  not  speak- 
ing now  of  the  strength  of  virtue.  At  all  times 
shall  a  man  be  strong  in  that,  but  in  youth  alone  is 
it  given  to  him  to  be  strong  in  doing.  Therefore  I 
would  say  to  all  you  young  men  and  all  you  young 
women,  lose  none  of  the  moments  of  your  young 
days.  Sacrifice  nothing  but  to  that  which  is  vigor- 
ous, to  that  which  calls  for  the  energy  of  life  which 
God  in  your  youth  has  given  you." 

Possibly  my  voice  trembled  as  I  said  this,  but  I 
know  it  was  not  the  trembling  of  pain  at  the 
thought  of  Diana's  migration.  She  will  go,  too, 

290 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

with  the  swallows.  Her  wings  are  ready;  she  is 
strong  in  the  energy  of  youth.  How  could  I  dare 
to  regret  it? 

She  was  silent  all  the  way  back  from  church.  It 
was  a  silence  I  thought  better  not  to  disturb.  Ex- 
cept for  her  casual  remarks,  it  was  not  until  we 
were  half  way  through  dinner  that  she  spoke  at  all 
of  what  was  in  her  mind. 

"Were  you  thinking  of  your  sermon,"  she  asked 
me,  "when  you  said  that  about  the  swallows  this 
morning  ?" 

"Very  probably  it  was  there  in  my  thoughts," 
said  I.  "Why  do  you  ask?" 

She  shook  her  head  and  said  no  more. 

Poor  Diana!  She  is  touching  life  for  the  first 
time  and,  with  the  gentleness  of  women,  is  sore  at 
heart  because  she  learns  that  in  life  there  is  always 
someone  who  must  be  hurt  and  she  it  is  must  hurt 
them. 


AUGUST  18 


MUST  not  let  it  hinder  my  obser- 
vations when  Diana  is  gone.    Indeed 
I  have  begun  already  to  prepare  my- 
self for  her  going.    Half  the  joy  of 
having  eyes  to  see  the  beauties  of 
Nature,  lies  in  showing  them  to 
someone  else.    That  much  of  the 
child    lives    on    in   all    of    us. 
When  I  was  a  boy,  I  would 
show  everything  to  my  mother. 
My  father,  doubtless,  I  thought 
had  seen  them  for  himself.    It 
is  always  the  women  a  man 
would  be  teaching.     It  is  always  the  woman  by 
whom  he  is  taught. 

The  other  day  a  most  unusual  incident  came  to 
my  notice.  I  have  been  too  busy  with  a  visit  from 
the  Bishop  to  record  it  in  my  note-book  before.  In 
a  deep  ditch  that  separates  the  land  of  two  farmers 
more  than  a  mile  from  here,  I  heard  the  reeling  note 
of  the  grasshopper- warbler,  a  bird  not  often  seen 
in  these  parts.  The  peculiarity  of  this  was  the  late- 
20  295 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

ness  of  the  year.  I  have  never  heard  the  note  of 
this  bird — a  note  so  like  the  trilling  of  a  fisherman's 
reel,  that  here  and  in  many  parts  of  the  country 
they  call  it  the  reel-bird — I  have  never  heard  it  be- 
fore, later  than  May  or  at  the  utmost  the  beginning 
of  June. 

If  it  may  be  called  singing,  then  he  sings  when 
they  are  building  their  nest  together.  Timid  little 
creatures  though  they  are,  I  have  sometimes  been 
able  to  watch  them  so  engaged,  when  with  short 
and  apprehensive  flights  they  traverse  the  whole 
length  of  the  hedges,  keeping  just  the  safe  distance 
from  their  observer  and  hiding  in  such  a  way  as 
makes  it  almost  impossible  to  see  them.  But  the 
sound  of  his  reeling  will  easily  tell  you  of  their 
whereabouts,  for  he  and  his  mate  fly  always  close 
together  at  the  time  of  nesting. 

He  was  alone  when  I  saw  him  the  other  day,  and 
I  can  only  account  for  the  sound  of  his  voice  by  the 
supposition  that  they  were  late  in  building  and  his 
mate  was  still  sitting  on  the  eggs.  They  should 
have  been  hatched  some  time  ago. 

Naturally  enough  when  I  came  home  it  was  the 
first  thing  I  thought  of  saying  to  Diana,  that  I  had 
heard  a  grasshopper-warbler  and  so  late  as  in  the 

296 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

month  of  August.  The  words  were  almost  on  my 
lips,  when  I  thought  of  how  soon  there  would  be  a 
time  when  upon  my  return,  I  must  keep  such  things 
to  myself. 

"I  will  begin  here  and  at  once,"  I  said  to  myself 
and  now,  until  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  re- 
cording it  in  my  note-book,  I  have  felt  as  though  I 
were  shielding  some  secret  from  her  and  have 
feared  lest  she  should  steal  it  away  from  me. 

But  to-day  I  have  taken  still  another  step.  All 
this  week,  her  thoughts,  I  know,  have  been  upon 
the  ideas  generated  in  her  mind  by  my  sermon  of 
last  Sunday.  Half  with  pleasure,  often  with  no 
little  sadness,  I  have  watched  in  her  the  ripen- 
ing of  the  seeds  which  I  have  sown.  She  says 
things  sometimes,  sometimes  asks  me  questions 
which  show  me,  more  plainly  than  any  confession 
she  could  make,  the  unsettled  condition  of  her 
mind. 

The  other  morning  when  we  rose  from  prayers 
and  the  servants  had  gone  out  of  the  room,  she  said, 

"What  would  you  think  of  a  woman  who  had  no 
children?" 

She  often  asks  me  questions  like  this,  which 
makes  me  think  that  Georgina  must  have  found  out 

297 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

much  of  the  woman  in  me  and  left  it  there  when 
she  died. 

"It  may  not  be  her  fault,"  said  I. 

"No— but  if  it  is." 

"There  may  be  pressing  reasons,"  I  replied — 
"She  may  be  so  poor  that  it  would  be  hard  to  give 
her  children  a  fair  chance  in  the  world." 

"You  wouldn't  blame  her  then?" 

"No — I  shouldn't  blame  her.  But  the  mercy  of 
God  is  always  the  wisdom  of  Nature.  I  should  try 
to  make  her  see  them  as  one  and  cultivate  a  faith 
in  them  both." 

Diana  stirred  her  coffee  round  and  round.  At 
last  she  looked  up  at  me, 

"Supposing  she  were  not  poor?"  she  asked. 

"I'm  old-fashioned,  my  dear,"  said  I,  "as  no 
doubt  you  know.  In  London  and  the  big  cities,  I 
believe,  it  is  becoming  fashionable  to  have  no  chil- 
dren. They  take  up  a  woman's  time.  She  has 
other  things  to  do.  The  need  for  amusement  is 
growing  every  day.  The  supply  is  increasing  with 
the  demands.  They  tell  me  the  Cremorne  Gardens 
at  Battersea  in  London  are  drawing  hundreds  of 
people  there  every  night.  New  theatres  are  being 
built.  I  wonder  sometimes  when  I  hear  these  things 

298 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

how  long  it  will  be  before  there  is  scarcely  a  home 
left  in  England.  Life  does  not  amuse  people  so 
much  as  it  did.  In  time  the  only  things  that  will 
amuse  them  will  be  amusements.  In  time  we  shall 
come  to  be  a  great  congregation  of  people,  strug- 
gling, fighting,  straining  to  forget  we  are  alive. 
Not  many  women  will  care  to  have  children  then. 
That  indeed  would  remind  them  too  much  of  life." 

"Don't  you  think  there  is  any  excuse,"  she  asked, 
"for  a  woman  who  chooses  to  go  without  them?" 

I  looked  across  the  table  at  her,  knowing  then 
all  she  meant. 

"None,"  I  said  quietly.  "I  could  think  of  none. 
As  I  said  just  now,  there  is  a  growing  desire  to 
manufacture,  to  invent  pleasures  in  life.  But  I  am 
sure  that  life  contains  enough  pleasures  already 
made.  To  me,  as  you  know,  there  are  such  pleas- 
ures in  Nature  and  in  my  work  as  make  the  days 
well  worth  the  living.  And  when  you  think  of  the 
countless  things  in  life  besides  just  the  birds 
and  this  garden  here  in  which  I  am  interested, 
doesn't  it  make  you  wonder  why  people  should 
strain  and  strive  to  manufacture  interests  for 
themselves  ?" 

"Are  you  absolutely  satisfied  with  the  pleasures 
299 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

that  just  the  birds  and  the  garden  give  you?"  she 
asked. 

There  was  a  note  of  intensity  in  her  voice  and  I 
knew  quite  well  what  was  her  meaning. 

"Why,  yes — absolutely,"  said  I. 


"Don't  /  mean  anything?"  she  asked. 

I  must  admit  that  I  was  hard  put  to  it  then  to 
give  such  an  answer  as  would  not  undo  all  the  good 
I  had  done.  But  I  had  no  time  to  think.  I  must 
say  and  at  once,  the  first  thing  that  came  into  my 
mind. 

300 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"You  mean,  my  dear,"  said  I,  "all  the  youth  and 
energy  that  I  have  left  behind  me." 

It  may  not  have  been  the  answer  that  she  wanted, 
but  it  set  her  thinking  once  more,  and  so  I  left  her 
until  this  evening  when  I  took  the  last  step  in  the 
course  I  had  laid  out  for  myself. 

The  darkness  had  set  in  with  such  a  chilly  wind 
that  we  had  the  fire  lighted  in  the  drawing-room, 
a  thing  I  only  remember  doing  once  before 
at  this  time  of  the  year.  When  we  were  seated 
there  after  our  tea,  I  asked  Diana  to  play  the 
preludes  to  me.  I  shall  not  hear  them  many  more 
times  now. 

There  was  one  new  one  she  had  got  in  which  I 
had  had  no  hand  in  acquiring. 

"When  did  you  do  that  one  ?"  I  asked. 

"About  a  week  ago.  Mr.  Tregenna  whistled  it 
for  me  while  I  took  it  down." 

"I  thought  he  didn't  care  for  birds,"  said  I. 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  replied.  "I  think  he  does  now. 
He's  caught  it  from  you  I  expect." 

"Well — isn't  that  one  a  slight  variation  on  the 
blackcap  ?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"We  saw  the  bird,"  she  said.  "It  was  a  grey- 
301 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

green  colour,  with  a  whitish  breast — not  quite 
white;  there  was  a  sort  of  touch  of  rust  about  it." 

"The  garden-warbler,"  said  I;  "it  does  sing  very 
like  the  blackcap,  too.  Play  it  again,  my  dear." 

She  played  it  again. 

"And  now  play  them  all  again." 

And  she  played  them  all  again. 

When  she  had  finished,  I  bid  her  come  and  sit 
beside  me,  for  that  there  was  something  which  I 
had  to  say. 

"I've  been  thinking,"  I  began,  "of  what  you  are 
going  to  do  with  yourself." 

"Do  with  myself?"  she  repeated. 

"Yes — you've  left  school,  but  there  is  a  great 
deal  more  education  you  might  learn.  I'm  not 
going  to  flatter  you,  my  dear,  but  your  intelligence 
is  well  above  the  ordinary.  Look  at  those  verses 
you  have  written — these  preludes  you  have  done, 
all  by  yourself.  Are  you  going  to  let  your  youth 
go  by  without  using  the  talents  you  have  got?" 

"Is  that  what  you  meant  in  your  sermon,"  she 
asked,  "when  you  said  that  youth  was  the  time  for 
doing?" 

"Quite  possibly  it  was,"  said  I.  "Now  what  I'm 
going  to  suggest  is  this,  that  you  go  abroad  for 

302 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

some  good  time  to  finish  your  education;  then,  if 
you  should  never  marry — which,  my  dear,  I  hope 
one  day  perhaps  you  will — then  you,  too,  will  have 
interests  in  life  when  the  energy  of  your  youth  is 
gone." 

She  looked  at  me  steadily  for  a  while. 

"How  about  you,  Daddy?"  she  asked.  ".What 
are  you  going  to  do  here  all  alone?" 

"All  alone!"  I  exclaimed.  "With  nearly  seven 
hundred  people  in  the  parish  and  more  than  a  hun- 
dred different  sorts  of  birds  in  the  woods.  All 
alone!" 

"But  I  promised  I'd  never  leave  you,"  said  she. 

"You  were  only  nineteen  then,"  I  reminded  her. 

"I'm  only  twenty  now,"  said  she. 

"Yes,  my  dear,  but  in  that  one  year  you've  be- 
come a  woman." 

She  looked  at  me  as  though  she  were  frightened, 
then  suddenly  she  rose  and  left  the  room. 


AUGUST  20 


subterfuge  has  taken  effect  as 
soon  as  this.  While  I  was  pre- 
paring an  address  this  morning,  I 
heard  a  sound  out  in  the  garden 
and,  looking  up,  I  saw  Allan  out- 
side the  window. 

"Could  you  spare  me  a   few 
moments?"  he  asked,  and  I  knew 

I 

then  that  for  me  the  days  of  Diana's  companionship 
were  numbered.  I  smiled  when  I  thought  how  that 
she  had  been  unable  to  tell  me  herself  and,  from  the 
look  in  his  face,  I  knew  that  Allan  was  trembling 
at  the  thought  of  all  that  lay  before  him. 

"Come  inside,"  said  I,  "or  would  you  sooner  that 
we  talked  out  there?" 

"I  think  out  here,"  said  he,  and  I  came  out  into 
the  garden  where  we  sat  beneath  the  mulberry  tree. 

For  some  moments  he  worried  with  his  fingers, 
pulling  to  pieces  a  blade  of  corn  that  he  had  picked 
on  his  way  up  to  the  vicarage. 

"I  don't  quite  know  how  to  begin,"  said  he. 

"Begin  anywhere,"  said  I. 
3°7 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

"Well,"  he  continued,  "in  your  sermon  the  Sun- 
day before  last,  you  talked  about  youth.  Perhaps 
I  didn't  rightly  gather  what  you  meant,  but  it 
seemed  to  me  that  you  suggested  a  man  should 
marry  when  he  was  young;  that — that  when  she 

was  young "  he  had  destroyed  the  blade  of 

corn;  now  he  was  pulling  nervously  at  the  empty 
husks.  And  how  I  liked  him  for  his  timidity! 
"That  when  she  was  young  a  woman  should — 
should  have  children." 

"I  did  mean  that,"  said  I. 

He  jumped  at  my  admission. 

"Well  don't  you  think,"  he  went  on  and  without 
hesitation  now,  "don't  you  think  that  besides  youth 
and  the  children  she  has  in  youth,  a  woman  should 
love  and  be  loved  in  her  youth?" 

I  thought  of  Georgina. 

"A  man  may  love  when  he  is  old,"  said  I. 

"Yes — yes — I  know — but  when  he's  young, 
surely  love  is  more — more  wonderful  then?" 

I  shook  my  head. 

"Some  things  can  be  always  wonderful,"  I  re- 
plied. "But  I  know  well,  my  dear  boy,  what  you 
mean.  In  youth,  love  is  a  budding  tree — the  sap  is 
alive  in  all  its  branches — it  stretches  out  its  arms 

308 


THE    OPEN   WINDOW 

to  the  sun.  That's  what  you  mean.  But  the  tree 
bears  fruit  as  time  goes  on  and  that  is  wonderful, 
too;  and  in  the  Autumn  we  shall  see  such  colours 
on  that  beech  tree  as  will  fill  your  eyes  with  wonder. 
But  I  know  well  what  you  mean.  With  you  it  is 
the  budding  time,  and  all  the  blood  is  warm  and 
tingling  in  your  veins.  And  every  time  you  see  my 
Diana,  you  feel  like  the  tree  stretching  out  its  arms 
to  the  sun." 

In  complete  amazement,  he  asked  me  how  I  knew. 

"Turn  your  head  slowly/'  said  I,  "and  look  up 
at  that  window  above  the  porch." 

Notwithstanding  my  warning,  he  turned  it  far 
too  swiftly  and  all  that  we  saw  was  the  flutter  of 
a  curtain  as  it  fell  back  into  place. 


SEPTEMBER  27 


21 


HE  swallows  are  congregating 
on  the  ridge  tiles.  Early 
next  month  Diana  will  be 
gone. 


OCTOBER 


IANA  was  married  this  morning. 
I  think  my  voice  was  quite 
steady  as  I  read  the  service; 
perhaps  it  was  not  quite  so 
steady  as  I  spoke  just  those  few 
words  to  them  from  the  altar 
when  they  were  man  and  wife. 
This  is  a  custom  I  always  adhere 
to,  notwithstanding  that  there 
are  some  today  who  ask  me  to 
dispense  with  it.  Even  this 
morning,  when  an  excusable 
emotion  made  me  fear  that  my  voice  might  play  me 
false,  I  would  not  depart  from  it. 

"My  dear  children,"  I  said — and  I  addressed 
them  as  though  they  were  both  standing  beside  me 
in  my  study — "you  are  going  to  a  far  country,  but 
you  are  taking  with  you  that  love  and  affection 
which  is  the  certain  message  of  God.  And  so  long 
as  you  hold  faithfully  and  in  all  happiness  to  the 
one,  no  power  on  earth  can  make  you  forget  the 
other." 


THE   OPEN   WINDOW 

I  had  meant  to  say  more  than  this,  but  something 
that  was  not  tears,  for  my  eyes  were  dry,  swelled 
in  my  throat  and  all  the  words  I  had  to  say  were 
choked  by  it.  So  I  just  laid  my  hands  on  their 
heads,  and  in  my  heart  I  said,  "May  the  peace 
of  God  which  passeth  all  understanding  keep 
your  hearts  and  minds  in  the  knowledge  and 
love  of  God  and  of  His  Son,  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord 
— Amen." 

Before  they  took  their  final  departure,  Diana  put 
her  hand  in  my  arm  and  asked  me  to  come  round 
the  garden  with  her  for  the  last  time.  The  tears 
were  falling  fast  from  her  eyes  as  we  walked.  I 
think  they  must  have  been  perilously  near  my  eyes, 
too,  but  when  we  came  to  the  little  cross  under  the 
apple  tree  where  the  bullfinch  was  buried,  I  could 
not  help  smiling  as  I  stopped  and,  in  silence  pointed 
it  out  to  her. 

"Love  begins  in  strange  ways,  my  dear,"  said  I. 
And  then,  as  I  said  that,  a  house-martin  flew  over 
our  heads — that  agitated  flight  which  comes  to  all 
the  birds  just  previous  to  migration.  It  is  the  same 
agitation,  I  suppose,  as  was  drawing  the  tears  from 
Diana's  eyes.  I  turned  her  round  that  she  might 
see  it  before  it  wheeled  away  over  the  housetop. 

318 


"For  the  last  time.' 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

"  'You  can  hear  the  South  Winds  calling',"  said 
I,  "  'and  the  swallow  hears  them,  too.' ' 

Then  she  looked  up  at  me  and,  with  her  eyes  still 
full  of  tears,  "Daddy — did  you  guess?"  said  she. 

"It's  all  guessing  when  it's  a  woman,"  said  I. 

I  did  not  tell  her  how  soon  I  had  guessed.  I  did 
not  tell  her  how  much  sooner  I  might  have  guessed 
than  I  did.  We  just  walked  then  in  silence  through 
the  garden,  visiting  every  corner  we  knew  well,  re- 
calling, as  though  by  tacit  understanding,  all  the 
memories  which  they  contained.  At  last  I  led  her 
back  to  the  house,  it  was  more  than  I  could  bear. 
Every  moment  cried  out  to  me  that  it  was  the  last 
and  almost  in  bitterness,  there  came  into  my  mind 
the  wish  that  it  was  all  over,  that  I  were  alone  to 
face  the  empty  rooms,  the  empty  garden  by  myself. 

When  finally  they  set  off  in  the  chaise  to  meet  the 
coach  where  it  halts  on  the  main  road  some  four 
miles  south  of  Bramlingham,  I  stood  at  the  gate 
with  the  rest  of  our  wedding  guests,  waving  my 
handkerchief  as  though  it  were  the  most  ordinary 
wedding  in  the  world. 

As  soon  as  in  common  politeness  I  could  leave 
them,  I  returned  to  the  house.  Everywhere  there 
were  the  signs  of  the  festivities  that  had  taken 

321 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

place,  but  the  house  itself  was  silent  and  empty. 
Even  the  servants  were  now  making  a  holiday  of 
the  occasion  and  I  was  quite  alone. 

First  one  room  I  looked  into  and  then  into  an- 
other. Everywhere  it  was  silent.  The  piano  was 
still  open  in  the  drawing-room  where,  the  evening 
before,  Diana  had  played  the  preludes  to  me  for  the 
last  time.  Upstairs  in  her  bedroom  was  a  satin  bow 
which  she  had  left  behind.  I  picked  it  up  and  put 
it  in  my  pocket. 

Because  of  the  excitement  of  that  day  I  suppose, 
her  bed  had  not  been  made.  The  clothes  were 
thrown  back  as  she  had  left  them  in  the  morning 
when  she  rose.  Her  room  is  next  to  mine.  I  have 
often  heard  her  singing  in  the  morning  as  she 
dressed  her  hair.  Shall  I  ever  hear  her  sing  again  ? 
They  have  promised  to  return.  But  I  have  looked 
often  at  the  atlas  and  California  is  a  long  way  away. 

I  did  not  touch  the  bed  clothes.  I  left  them  as 
they  were  and,  crossing  the  landing,  I  opened  the 
door  of  the  room  where  Georgina  died. 

"Death  cannot  be  the  end,"  said  I,  and  I  closed 
the  door  behind  me. 

Everything  was  in  darkness  for  the  curtains  were 
drawn.  I  walked  across  the  room  and  pulled  them ; 

322 


THE    OPEN    WINDOW 

then  I  undid  the  catch  and  threw  open  the  window 
wide.  The  warm  sunshine  beat  down  upon  my 
face,  the  far  country  was  pale  in  a  haze  of  Autumn 
heat,  but  the  birds  were  silent.  There  was  not  even 
the  voice  of  a  robin  to  break  the  stillness  of  the 
country  side.  But  they  will  sing  again.  They  will 
sing  again  next  year. 


(i) 


DEC  101986 


Due  Two  WeaVs  FromD^e  o< 


w — 


™ « WniMllff 
+.-JJ.  °  U1  '44  8270 

^ 


